Fantasy Rocks

Subject:	Beginning the year
Time:	2:13 pm.
Mood:	lethargic.

I've survived my first week of my new schedule (Mondays off / studying, Tuesdays in class for 6 hours and commuting, then three eight-hour days of work Wednesday - Friday). I'm pretty tired but think the schedule will be just fine. It even appears that a lot of the student events (club meetings, unofficial happy hours) are taking place on Tuesday evenings, which hopefully means I won't completely lose touch with my classmates. Vet school classes also officially started this past Tuesday. They get to play with kittens in their handling class! (Basically, the school is taunting them with rescue kittens in hopes everyone will adopt one at the end of the quarter. Sorry, but Darwin is enough cat for me!)

Classes are ok. Immigrants and refugees seems like it will be really interesting. Our first assignment is to interview an immigrant, so I'm going to interview my dad this weekend. Research is a little meh. I'm trying to think of my project for the year. So far my idea (based on something I can do in 9 mos and data available at internship) is to possibly compare the demographics of our program to general prison demographics. Mental Health Policy is extremely boring, which was to be expected.

Internship isn't bad so far. I have my own desk and computer with internet! yeah! My supervisor is pretty awesome too. She's one of those keep is real, no bullshit types, which I do well with. So far I've mostly been observing meetings, groups, and sitting around trying not to get in people's way. Hopefully I'll be trained more and can do more soon.

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Subject:	settling in, sorta
Time:	3:42 pm.
Mood:	sad.

Sooo... here I am in really, really boring Vacaville. Yeah, this town pretty much sucks. It's really hot here - yesterday is hit a ridiculous 108 degrees(amazing how the weather goes to really nice in Berkeley to horrendous just a 45-min drive away), and there's not a lot to do, we're quickly finding out. Since Vacaville is the next town over from Fairfield, which has Travis Air Force Base, a lot of military people live here. It's also a bedroom community for Davis, Sacramento, the near East Bay, etc. The apartment complex seems to be mostly families, some military, some not. There's a hilarious 5-year-old upstairs who comes down sometimes multiple times a day to play with the cat and the rats. He adores them all! Sometimes it's a pain, but it's good socialization for Darwin, who's so shy he runs under the bed when anyone he doesn't know is around. He's already not instantly running away when unfamiliar people are around! But yeah, restaurants. It's mostly boring middle America chains (think Olive Garden, Chevys), although we've found one really good local Chinese place and a few more mediocre family run restaurants. There doesn't seem to be a lot in terms of nightlife, although I haven't really checked it out yet. Most age-appropriate entertainment, as well as young people, seem to be in Davis.

The good news is that we asked sweetly to get a 10-month lease rather than a year, and they said yes. The apartment itself (a 2br/2ba, about 850 sq ft) is quite nice, aside from some 70-style decor and a rather small kitchen. It's nice to have pretty much all the extremities fit in closets, rather than have them spilling over everywhere like in the last apartment (which had no storage space to speak of, just one small bedroom and one small coat closet). The second full bath is a nice plus too. I think this is actually probably more space than 2 people need, since instead of stuff spilling out we have gaps where furniture and stuff could go, but it's nice not to be super cramped and tripping over stuff in every which direction.

Grad school started Friday with a field work meeting. It was nice to see classmates again but also a distressing reminder of how far away I am. My concentration is offering the option of a capstone course next year, but the time that works for everyone but me is 8am-10am Monday morning, which would mean making the long commute the day I don't have class just for a pass/fail course, paying a ton for parking, paying the $4 toll, and getting up really early and hitting rush hour. So it doesn't look like it's going to happen for me. I must've looked cranky about it because my FW advisor called me over after class and asked if I was mad at the school! LOL. I've e-mailed my profs to let them know I won't be in class next week for training, so nothing to report back on there for awhile.

I'm hoping the temporary stay here will get easier once I get busy with schoolwork and internship in the next couple of weeks.

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Subject:	Be careful what you yelp for
Time:	11:09 am.
Mood:	irritated.

I guess I'll pos quickly to say that I'm pretty much settled in at the new apartment, now complete with internet access (despite the complete idiot who came from Comcast - it took him 2 hours to figure out how to connect everything. Who thinks some random person like me could've done i faster?). However, the purpose of this post is not to talk about this but a recent Yelp experience I had.

Having not much else to do this summer, I got into writing Yelp reviews. A lot of them. I've also discovered this site is a gerat place to find well-liked restaurants, nightlife, personal services, hotels, etc. So I found my local movers on here. They had an average 5-star review from over 40 reviews and weren't very expensive. I was excited. Unfortunately, the movers weren't quite as great as I'd thought. They were 15 minutes late with no phone call, very slow, broke a wine glass, and didn't reassemble the bed. I was irritated enough when I discovered the broken wine glass that I decided to write my own yelp review on them to discuss my personal experience. I gave a mixed review, not a bad review, as there were some good things about the company too (cost, enthusiastic, faster on the flip side, etc). I gave 3/5 stars, which means "A-Ok" according to yelp, found a really weak nonsecured wireless signal from one of my neighbors and sent the anonymous review.

A couple hours later I got a phone call from the moving company while I was unpacking. Thinking they'd forgotten something I picked up. I get the head of the company (who was also one of the three movers - it's a small business) rambling about how he's sorry about my wine class and willing to compensate me (at this point I'm wondering how the hell he knows this), but that he needed to clarify that he hadn't been sitting in the truck during the front side of the move and that he'd been doing a bunch of Very Important Things. He then went on about how his feelings had been very hurt, that he'd been in this business for 20 years, and that he was good about what he did. Finally figuring out he was talking about my supposedly anonymous review, I explained to him that I did not consider 3 stars to be a bad review. He then laughed and said "well I prefer it to a 1-star." Some more rambling about how good he was, and then he left.

So I did apologize to him about misunderstanding what he was doing in the truck - the reason I thought he was just sitting there is the other 2 movers upstairs with us TOLD us that. Fine. But he should NOT have called me based on an anonymous review and harassed me. He should have contacted me through yelp's business messaging system. Unfortunately, this guy has my phone number, knows where I live, and is obviously willing to bully me. What I wanted to do was update how he'd bothered me, formally complain to yelp, and lower my stars. However I felt so guilted/ freaked out by the experience that I deleted the part about him sitting in the truck (which was ok, as that was a misunderstanding) and RAISED them to 4 stars. ugh, I am disgusted by myself, as well as how rude and unprofessional this guys is.

So, the moral of my story is that some businesses will figure out who you are on this anonymous system, track you down, and bother you. I can't help but wonder now if this guy has a 5-star rating because he's threatened other people into giving him higher ratings after the fact...

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Subject:	Preparations and The Rest Of My Summer
Time:	11:24 pm.
Mood:	okay.

Although last week's training at CMF remained canceled, I was able to come to my internship for a different training this week. (apparently the trainings did not need to be done in order like I'd thought.) Although it involved three rather painful days of waking up at 6am and driving an hour, the end result is that I only need to miss the first week, rather than the first two weeks, of my classes next semester. A much better solution. Normally I'd be beginning school again September 1st, but for me the first day will be Sept. 8. The training was somewhat dry, but I also learned some interesting stuff, like the prison gang system, suicide prevention in prisons, and the prison structure in CA. I definitely feel like I'm going to learn a ton here.

I survived the remainder of my summer. I filled it up with fun day trips to cool places (like the Boardwalk in SC and the County Fair with

calculusdude16 and

rhythmia), some patchy babysitting, and paid research study gigs, combined with pre-employment stuff for my internship. While I was doing that Amanda's elderly and ailing grandmother unfortunately passed away, and dealing with the aftermath of that took a week or so. A couple days later my mom came in for a visit, which we spent in Berkeley and San Francisco. 48 hour after my mom left, my dad and Leslie came. They spent a day in Berkeley seeing campus, and then for the weekend we joined them at a nice resort in Napa Valley for wine tasting and fine dining. After that has been training, preparing for the move, and dealing with my shock that the summer is almost over.

An apartment has been secured in the new city, and moving day is really soon - August 18th. The Berkeley apartment is surrounded by boxes. The new apartment is really nice; it's a 2 br / 2 ba, with a patio, complex pool and fitness center, and only about 2 miles from my internship (46 miles to UC Berkeley, 20 miles to UC Davis vet school). I'm not as thrilled about Vacaville itself but am trying to keep an open mind and remember that I'm likely only going to be there a year. I'll post the address later - I don't feel like looking it up right now.

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Subject:	Dept of Corrections - get your act together!
Time:	9:44 am.
Mood:	cranky.

Last April I signed up to do the Department of Corrections mandatory training for my internship that begins in about a month. The supervisor who hired Amber (the other grad student with this placement) and me told us it was extremely important we do this training offered only once a month this month so that we could start working with clients immediately in the fall and not have to miss any school. Since the training was paid, I agreed. In order to do this training, I had to rearrange a decent bit of my life. Most notably, I couldn't find any summer jobs because none of them would let me out of that week for the training.

Training was scheduled for this week. I got up at 6am and then drove the 45 minutes to Vacaville to make the 8am training start. I arrived about 10 minutes early, just before Amber. When we arrived, they were like "training? oh yeah, we just canceled that a few minutes ago. there were only 2 of you signed up, so it wasn't worth it." A minute later, about 10 other people showed up. They were like, "oops, you weren't on our list. sorry, it's too late. already canceled." One of the DMH (dept or mental health) people got our supervisor over, who had made his 1.5 hour commute to work just to make sure we found the training. He'd had no idea it was canceled. He called the warden to see what was happening. *They* had no idea it was canceled. So he tried to take us in the prison to at least do paperwork. We were told we couldn't get clearance till noon. So our supervisor threw his hands up in the air and sent us home, telling us he'd make sure they paid us something for showing up. (At which point we found out the only good news of the day: our supervisor has it in writing that we will be getting paid. It was unclear this summer if our stipends would survive the budget cuts, but they have.)

So, after rearranging my summer for this training, we're going to do everything except some of the paperwork next month. This means we'll have to miss a week of classes and delay doing the real internship work for 2-3 weeks. What an illustrious start to my stint with the prison system!

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Subject:	Photos from Costa Rica (and other trips)
Time:	12:45 pm.
Mood:	resigned.

Costa Rica Photos

And, while I've been at it, since I haven't been good about updating this thing (grad school does that to ya), here are photos from my Mexico vacation in January and Figure Skating Worlds / LA in March. Actually if you're so inclined, starting on this page of this album, you can also witness the Obama inaugeration at UC Berkeley, my 25th birthday, Nick & Crystal's wedding, my brother's college graduation, the beach, and the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Wow, looking at those photos again makes me realize how much cool stuff I've been up to in the past 6 mos!

Returned from Costa Rica about 6 days ago. I had a great time in Costa Rica. I took classes for four hours a day, really improving my spanish, went on a lot of trips to various places (see where on the photos), and lived with a really nice (if somewhat emotionally exhausting) host family. I think the highlight was the super-warm beach and getting the guts to go on the canopy - twice! My host family was an elderly retired couple with 4 kids and 6 grandkids who were often underfoot. Aside from some cultural differences (eg, they were confused that I don't live with my parents since I'm not married and were constantly doing the Catholic cross prayer on me) and lack of privacy (bedroom door that was stuck and didn't close well, being constantly followed around in the house unless I said I was napping or going to bed), they were great. Which reminds me, I need to buy them a gift soon. I'd love to go back in the future. Maybe next summer. Meanwhile I've joined a spanish conversation group in the area to try and keep improving my skills.

Unfortunately, I come back to the US facing the cold, hard reality of the rest of my summer. Thanks to the economy being in the shitter, I have no job, despite a long, hard effort that begin back in January. I also found 2 scary things on on Wednesday. The first is that I didn't get a single fellowship from my grad department for next year. The second was a phone call that the nice stipend I was told I'd get from my internship next year might no longer exist after Arnold is through with government org's budgets. I should know by the end of the month if it still exists. If it doesn't and I continue to not have a job this summer I'll probably be pretty fucked. So this leaves me till my training begins the first week of August, if the current state continues, with over 5 weeks to sit around and worry about money and do little but watch my cat sleep, volunteer in a couple of local events that need help, and find an apartment in a new city where I don't really want to live. trying to hold out hope...

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Subject:	Headed to Costa Rica in About 24 hours
Time:	11:46 pm.
Mood:	excited.

Starting when my red-eye flights leaves in just over 24 hours, I will be in Costa Rica for 2 weeks! I will be doing this program, a Spanish language program for social workers that, along with language classes, involves learning about the profession in Costa Rica and visiting agencies, cultural activities, and various touristy excursions. I don't have the details on all the touristy things we're doing, but so far I'm signed up for a really exciting one the first weekend of June, where I will be spending the weekend at a national park with a beach and jungle and touring the jungle on a zip line. I am a little nervous but also super excited! Not only is this my first time in Central America, I'm the first person in my family to ever travel this far south. My parents, especially my dad, travel to various European countries fairly frequently, but they've never ventured further south than Mexico.

I'll at a minimum have internet access at the academy where we're taking Spanish classes, so feel free to email and/or add me on skype. I don't have video chat, but I have a headset for audio. Otherwise I'll catch ya on the flip side!

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Subject:	halfway through my masters degree!
Time:	6:55 pm.
Mood:	accomplished.

I finished my second semester of graduate school on Thursday! I'm mostly relieved and exhausted at this point and still in a jet-lagged haze. I finished everything about 5 days early so I could hop on a plane to Indiana for my brother's graduation. I am back and decompressing from another semester of hard work and still getting used to having no internship, papers, or tests!

At the end of May I'm leaving for Costa Rica for 2 weeks, where I'm attending a Spanish language program for social workers. until I leave for that (which I'm very excited about) I have very little happening in my life. This is a good thing because I think I could curl up and enter a deep, trance-like sleep for the next several days.

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Subject:	Big newsish updates from my wildly exciting life
Time:	10:44 am.
Mood:	mixed feelings.

The biggest news is that Amanda was accepted to UC Davis a couple weeks ago! She'll be starting vet school this fall is part of the (un?)lucky class of 2013.

UC Davis is a little over an hour's drive from UC Berkeley, making things slightly complicated but workable. The good news is that I was able to secure a well-regarded 2nd year mental health placement at the CMF (California Medical Facility) in Vacaville, about 45 miles east of Berkeley and 20 miles east of Davis - both easy highway drives on the 80. Since I'll only have class 1-2 days a week next year (my internship is 3 days) and Amanda will have class 5 days it seems like the fairest for us to live in Vacaville, where I have my internship once our lease runs out in August.

I'm going to miss living in Berkeley like crazy. this is the hardest part of all of this. since I ultimately want to be back in SF or very close (Vacaville is on the waaaay outer rung of the bay area, a good 60 miles from SF), this is definitely going to be a temporary relocation. This is keeping up my streak of being unable to stay in one apartment for very long - I will be moving for the 8th time in 8 years!!!!

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Subject:	Staph is back!
Time:	6:09 pm.
Mood:	annoyed.

About a month after my last staph infection was diagnosed and 2 1/2 weeks after treatment was completed, the staph infection returned a couple of centimeters away from the first infection.

I rushed myself to urgent care within 1 1/2 days of noticing the second abscess, which made the lancing procedure much easier and less painful. It also means the infection didn't spread out of the abscess itself, meaning I hopefully don't need antibiotics (the doctor gave me a strong exfoliater instead to try and exfoliate possible staph-causing bacteria off of my armpit). The lab results from my last infection also indicated it wasn't MRSA, which means this one almost certainly isn't either.

However, I'm quite concerned the staph infection is going to continue returning.

I'm under a lot of stress at the moment. I'm in the middle of midterms, getting ready to interview for my second year clinical internship placement, and working on a summer job search that's so far yielded nothing but rejection letters. I definitely did not need to get staph again on top of this!!!

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Subject:	Evil, evil bacteria infections
Time:	9:27 am.
Mood:	sick.

Friday the 13th was pretty unlucky for me. Last Sunday I just thought I had a gross ingrown hair. Thursday it turned out to be a bad abscess, and I was supposed to be better after a simple yet painful laceration & drainage procedure. Then I woke up Friday with a fever and the infection spreading into my pinkie. Turns out I have a staph infection and possibly MRSA that I may have picked up somewhere in the hospital where I intern twice a week. I am currently loopy on some really hardcore MRSA-killing antibiotics and codeine.

Happy Valentine's Day and long weekend to me! :( I feel really gross but need to get my strength up so I don't ruin tonight's dinner plans like I've ruined everything else this weekend. I guess I'll go back to sleep now that I've taken my antibiotics and eaten and see if that improves me.

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Subject:	New Year
Time:	10:45 am.
Mood:	thirsty.

The first lesson of 2009: do not mix cheap champagne with other alcohol. I didn't have all that much to drink and still got incredibly sick after toasting with champagne at the new year. Spent most of the first lying in bed trying not to hurl.

Just got back from a wonderful, too short, family vacation to Mexico. Not only was the weather and beach/pool exceptional, humidity and all!, I went on some amazing adventures. They included riding on and petting dolphins, snorkeling in the pacific, riding a horse on the beach and in a tiny Mexican village, kayaking, and incredible authentic Mexican food. The only small blemish was missing my connection by minutes on the way back home and being stranded at the Denver airport for 4 hours. It was pretty interesting to get home at midnight when I had to be at my internship at 9am. Needless to say I was pretty exhausted and jetlagged. It's just a couple more months until my next trip!

My clinical internship resumed yesterday on Wednesday and Fridays, but until my classes begin the 20th I don't have a lot to do otherwise except for one competency exam and a service day on MLK Jr day for my scholarship. I guess that means I should do things like clean. meh.

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Subject:	hello from freezing Chicago! and big news
Time:	1:10 pm.
Mood:	cold.

I am in the midst of a brief, last-minute trip to Chicago. (headed back to Berkeley tomorrow, hopefully on time since it looks like no snow's predicted in the morning.) It is COLD here. today the temperature is -2, but with wind chill it feels even colder. after walking about 2 blocks this afternoon with Sarah for brunch, I literally felt like my face was going to fall off! It's also snowed every single day I've been here.

I'm here because my mom decided very suddenly to buy a condo and move to downtown Chicago in early April. I needed to clean out my room and salvage what I still want. This was the only time it worked for me to come between then and now. I spent two straight days doing that, and it turns out I no longer give a crap about most things in my childhood bedroom. That said, it was nice to save what I do want. My mom will be taking us on a tour of her new condo later today. It's about 1/2 mile from my dad's condo - they could run into each other again!

So that is my trip and the big news about my mom's upcoming move. I'm looking forward to being back in Berkeley tomorrow where the high will probably a now temperate-feeling 40.

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Subject:	What a week it's been
Time:	12:46 pm.
Mood:	torn.

On Monday night, my rat Ruby died. As I'd mentioned in a post a few months ago, the poor thing had been sick for quite awhile. Although she didn't get any more tumors, she kept fighting a variety of other health ailments, including a skin condition that made patches of her hair fall out. Her body finally gave in, but she at least died peacefully in her sleep in her favorite place in the cage. Her sister rat, Pie, is really lonely and is now being treated for a chest infection that she contracted from Ruby before Ruby died. I didn't get much sleep that night.

On Tuesday, Obama won. I was following election returns in my 4-6 class on my laptop when I saw that he won Ohio. I sort of figured at that point that he was going to win early, so I skipped the gym to watch the returns. Sure enough, it was official at 8pm! The scene was absolutely nuts in Berkeley - people were honking horns, screaming, and partying in the streets. I also kind of wished I'd had the foresight to vote absentee and fly back to my hometown, Chicago, to be in Grant Park for Obama's speech. It was still nice to watch on TV. I was too exhausted from Monday to join in on anything, but I think I might go celebrate a little tonight.

Wednesday I woke up to the news that Prop 8 had passed. A lot of my happiness from Obama went away. This isn't just about gay marriage - it's also about the fact that California is the first constitution to be amended to take rights away from people, rather than protect rights. Regardless of each individuals' feelings on same sex marriage, I find it disgusting that 52% of Californians found it ok to strip rights out of a constitution. If we keep following that line of thought, all kinds of measures to take away rights could be introduced. We could have measures about separate but equal water fountains and interracial marriage. (BTW, when the CA courts ruled that interracial marriage was constitutional, the majority of Californians were against that ruling.) I hope the courts determine this constitutional. Meanwhile, it's a good thing I'm enrolled in graduate school in California, or I might be very tempted to come back to Illinois!

What a roller coaster this is, and I'm not sure it's over yet...

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Subject:	Got my placement
Time:	1:49 pm.
Mood:	busy.

In the days after posting my last entry, about the trauma getting my 1st year clinical internship has been, my Berkeley supervisor and potential (but no longer) supervisor at the Fairmont worked out their little tiff. The result is that I'll be working at the Outpatient Psychiatry program at Highland Hospital in Oakland. The other girl in the situation with me will be at Fairmont in San Leandro as planned.

I had my interview yesterday, which I think went well. Well enough that they've offered me the internship today, at least. The hospital itself is HUGE (I went through 10 minutes worth of hallways just to find my unit), but the unit I'm working at is tiny. I'll be working there with two first year Berkeley MSWs I already know, which shoud make it a little less intimidating. It sounds like the program involves doing group therapy and classes for severely mentally ill patients, who are stable enough to live at home but still need extra help. Depending on the program they come 1-5 times a week for 3-5 hours a day. The clients primarily have schizophrenia, bipolar, and related disorders. It should definitely be interesting.

Now the main challenge will be all the medical stuff I need to get together - not one but TWO TB tests, records of my MMR and Hep B vaccines, a form I have to sign that says "yes, I promise I've had chicken pox, I swear!," and a preemployment health screening. Until all these are completed my classmates and I won't be able to work with clients. Sounds like our first week there will mostly be paperwork, then. Ahh, the joys of interning for the county.

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Subject:	Ugh, what a week
Time:	3:08 pm.
Mood:	distressed.

As part of my MSW program, I am to be placed in an internship starting October 8th on Wednesdays and Fridays. To get a good placement, we filled out questionnaires and then had half hour meetings with our field work advisers. I received a great placement at the Outpatient Psychiatry Program in San Leandro. So I contacted the director there. He emailed me saying my field work adviser hadn't contacted them in time, but he would talk to his administrator and let us (myself and the other woman placed there) know if there was any additional space.

Two days after he said he would contact us, the director at that placement emailed us and let us know there was no space. However, he did say there were placements at an identical program in Oakland. I emailed my adviser, who is out of town, and asked him if I could contact that placement. My adviser told me not to contact anyone until he could call me.

He finally called me at 2:30. He said the supervisor at the San Leandro placement had done things differently this year than last year and that he emailed them plenty early and never heard back. He doesn't want me to call the Oakland hospital because two Berkeley interns are already placed there and he fears they want the other girl and me to compete with those already placed there. He is going to "be in touch" with me with other placements next week and says I might be starting my placement late. (this is a problem because there are a pre-set number of days we have to complete according to national standards.)

So now, thanks to infighting and miscommunication between my adviser and once potential future supervisor, I am 1 1/2 weeks away from when field work is supposed to start with no placement, no prospects for a placement, and no potential site interviews. I am one of three people in this predicament. Oh, and I have a ton of homework to do for my classes on top of this. Sometimes it sucks to get stuck in the middle.

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Subject:	Prrrrrr aka. I have a cat!
Time:	4:51 pm.

Now that I'll be living in a place in five days that is cat-friendly, I have a cat! I didn't plan on having one until the actual move, but he sort of dropped into our laps six weeks ago and has primarily been living at Amanda's vet clinic until we can take him to the cat-friendly place. What happened: a little (3 month old) orange tabby kitty from the shelter came to Amanda's clinic to be neutered before an adoption, which is a common occurrence. It turned out he couldn't be neutered yet (in short, his balls hadn't and still haven't dropped), and the vet did an exam and discovered he has a fairly severe (Grade 3 on a 1 - 6 scale of abnormality) heart murmur. The potential owners decided not to adopt him. Because nobody really wants a kitten with a heart defect, the shelter was going to put him down. Because he had such a wonderful temperament and I love orange tabbies, he came home instead. The shelter was so glad we took him off our hands we didn't even have to pay the adoption fee! His name, because he is going to be a scientist someday, is Darwin. Even with the heart murmur, he should be able to live a normal, hopefully not shortened by heart troubles, life as an indoor cat. However, because of the heart issues, he's going to be a small cat (he's now almost 5 months old and barely over 4lbs) and slow to mature, hence the inability to get him neutered yet. I'd actually wanted to get a special needs cat that likely wouldn't have otherwise had a home, so I don't mind. (Previously I'd been planning on getting a cat with FIV - feline AIDS when I moved, but she found another home.) Now that he'll be legal in the next apartment, I'm very excited!

I'm also sad because our albino rat, Ruby, had her third operation in two months. She's had two tumors and an abscess, which is a lot of health issues for a rat who's only 16 months old. (Female rats are prone to tumors but not usually until after the age of 2 or so.) If she gets another one, I don't want to put her through surgery again - hence, she'll probably just be kept comfortable until her quality of life becomes poor.

Yesterday was my last day at work! It was difficult to say goodbye to the clients but exciting that I'm moving on to something more fabulous. My coworkers had a party for me last night, which I paid $40 for the privilege to attend and mostly seemed to be an excuse for my new boss, who just took her kids and separated from her husband, to get plastered and hit on men 15 years her junior. Meh, it's over now. The equine therapy center, where I've been volunteering Saturdays for the past year, is taking me out to dinner tonight. Yay. :-) After that, I have a ton of moving crap that I'm not looking forward to doing up until the big day, Thursday. I can't wait to be out of her in a few short days.

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