So I’m alive! And I finally got around to doing my August Day in the Life for my 101 in 1001 project. I’m going to post more about my life for the past month in an upcoming post so for now I’ll just head straight into the pictures.

Warning: Image HEAVY

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

So Alegría on Saturday was amazing (as expected). It wasn’t quite as good as the other Cirque show that we’ve seen but I was still very impressed. This was definitely a more “technical” show regarding the stunts / stage setup, so Michael was quite occupied trying to figure out how it all worked. It seemed short to me, but I’m guessing that’s only because I was having such a good time. I’m glad we went, and now I have a hoodie from two different Cirque shows. I’d love to collect them all!

On the way home Michael decided he was hungry so we ended up stopping at a Sheetz. Now I haven’t been in Sheetz since I graduated, and anyone who went to and/or goes to Juniata knows that Sheetz and their takeout (MTO) tends to become quite a staple in one’s lifestyle. So after a brief yet emotional reunion with the MTO touch-screen order system, we both got something to eat. I also stocked up with 4 bags of “Party Mix” which is a combination of chips, Cheetos and pretzels that I have never been able to find/buy from anywhere but those stores and my old dorm’s vending machine.

Tuesday Nicole came to my house so that she, Michael and I could go to the Troy Fair the next morning. We ordered out Pizza and ended up watching a Jeff Dunham special and then one of Robin Williams’ stand-up specials. Michael came over after he got out of work and we ended sitting down to watch Push. It was actually a pretty good movie even though it had Dakota Fanning in it. She’s a good actress, but I mostly to avoid her movies because I tend to associate her with extremely crappy horror flicks.

Wednesday was, in a word, wet. When the three of us left for the fair it wasn’t raining at all. But before we left we had a conversation about Nicole’s shoes and whether or not she should wear her flip-flops. The exact words out of her mouth were “as long as it’s not muddy I’ll be fine”. Well, by the time we got to the fairgrounds, it was indeed raining. We managed to miss the heavy downpours by ducking into several of the display buildings, and the fair didn’t really seem any less lively even considering the weather. Plus I got lots of cute cow pictures and finally found out that my favorite cow breed, which I’ve been calling “oreo cows” are actually called Dutch Belts. Once Nicole left (she had to get home to make it to work), Michael and I went back to his house to dry out. I intended on taking a nap, but ended up playing WoW instead. It eventually stopped raining and we went back to the fair.

The reason we went back to the fair is that we had tickets to see the rodeo which was going on that night. We went last year and it was lots of fun. They did bull riding and women’s barrel racing with some “shows” in between. One of the shows was a stunt rider and the other was Jerry Olsen and his two performing horses Justin Boots and Bucko.

Now I’ve seen Mr. Olsen’s performance before, and it is quite interesting. This one, however, I was not impressed with. Bucko was cute as ever and didn’t everything he was asked. Justin, the full sized horse does a few stunts with a moving vehicle. The entire ring was and absolute muddy mess and even the horses who were just trotting around in it earlier were slipping around a bit. I’m guessing that this is why even after several attempts he would not run and jump into the back of the moving truck (and Mr. Olsen openly admitted that horses were extremely skittish about stepping on or into anything that is moving away from them). Mr. Olsen was getting visibly angry each and every failed attempt (I’m guessing because the crowd was laughing quite profusely) to the point where the last time he gave the command he literally hit Justin in the neck with his fist and proceeded to kick the horse in its back leg. At that point I was ready for the show to be over; I don’t care if the animal is a performer, there’s no need to use physical violence on it just because it isn’t doing what you want it to.

After the shows were over they finished up the bull riding. As the last couple riders were getting ready to go on, the Heavens opened up and it started to downpour. Once the rodeo was over, Michael and I went to get some last minute foodstuffs which he wanted (since we were both hungry). I had an umbrella but when 90% of me was soaked and there were too many things to carry, I just gave up and put it under my arm (it was leaking anyways). So I was soaked from head to toe, my slice of pizza was soaked to the point where a little water/grease path was running in a steady stream off my plate.

By the time Michael drove me home, he decided that it wasn’t worth trying to get back home with as badly as it was raining, so we threw our stuff in the dryer and watched TV for a little while. When the cable went out I finally decided that it was time for bed.

Its been a fun few days, and now I’m getting ready to take my GRE on Saturday. Everybody wish me luck.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

You know theres a problem when you’ve upgraded your plugins 4 times and Wordpress itself once since your last post. I really wanted to post more here, but since my life has been one big blob of blah lately I really haven’t had much inspiration. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything worthwhile with my life, and therefore really don’t think anybody wants to read about how I spent the day slumped on the couch watching the last season of Gilmore Girls for the eight-thousandth time.

Last night my mother and I learned a valuable lesson: Do not assume that just because your first dog was too lazy to fight back during “hair trims” that your second will be the same. We decided last night that Pudgie really needed a trim. He’s never been cut before and sheds something terrible. We planned for it to go down in the usual way. My mom would use the clippers while I held the dog. Well things did not go according to plan, and unfortunately now my dog looks like a drunken psychopath took a hack-saw to his fur. I feel so sorry for the little guy, but we’re getting some better clippers from my aunt which also have a guide on them so that we can try to fix him up a little. As it is we probably couldn’t take him out in public without someone reporting us for animal cruelty. But I guess I could show them the deep gashes on my arms and legs from his nails and then ask them who they think was being abused.

Next Saturday Mike and I are going to see Cirque du Solei: Alegría. This will be my second Cirque show, the first being Saltimbanco. We’ve got high hopes for it, since the last one was so incredible. We tried to get my mother to go with us, but her car’s transmission decided to die and that put a kabosh on that plan. I really wish she would go too. But all the times I asked her she just shrugged it off and now we already have our tickets and its too late. I’m sure we’ll have a great time anyways, but I’ll just feel bad.

Speaking of my mother’s car… It dying has had a nice little effect on my life. Since we only had the two cars, Mom’s boyfriend Wurt decided to let us borrow one of his vehicles. Well, he only has two vehicles too, and he couldn’t part with his truck, so we ended up getting his 1978 Anniversary Edition Corvette.

If this were a normal car, the lending wouldn’t have had any impact on me at all. However, as anyone who has driven a Corvette knows, they are anything but normal. This car is HUGE on the ouside, extremely wide, and yet has a very tiny interior. For those reasons, my mother dislikes driving it (and is somewhat afraid to). What happens when she borrows a car she can’t/won’t drive? Whitney’s car becomes Mommy’s car and the Corvette becomes Whitney’s. I was scared to death the first couple times I drove it, but after that it has been smooth sailing all the way. I particularly like the way everyone looks and stares as it goes past (but that’s just the attention whore in me). I’m going to be sad when we have to give it back.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

As part of my 101 in 1001 project, I decided that it would be neat to do a Day in the Life photo shoot once a month. Its just a way to chronical my life over the months and it’s fun to do.

So here’s the day in the life that I did today. Didn’t take as many pictures as I had wanted, but oh well.

(Below the cut is 20 more pictures – dial uppers beware)

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

Every night I’ve been making a ‘To Do’ list for myself of things that I’d like to/should get done the next day. Unfortunately having a list doesn’t seem to be motivating me like it used to since I’ve barely completed any of the things that I wanted. The list just keeps getting carried over to the next day and added to so instead of getting smaller it seems to be growing by 1-2 items each day. But since now the weekend is over and today was Michael’s day off I have the rest of the week with relatively nothing to do; so there is no excuse for me to not get my list finished.

Today was relatively lazy seeing as I woke up much later than expected (around 2:00pm) which I guess is due to the fact that I didn’t get to sleep until around 4 in the morning. But once I got up and around, Michael picked me up and we headed to Elmira, NY to get dinner and do some shopping. We ate at TGI Friday’s so that I could get the burger I was craving, and I ended up trying their new Blackberry Long Island Iced Tea… It was absolutely TERRIBLE. I’d never order it again there even if someone paid me. The Ultimate Hawaiian Volcano drink on the other hand… YUM. Michael had steak so I also got to steal some of his mashed potatos (in my opinion, TGIF makes the best mashed potatoes and french fries of any restaurant I’ve been to). We also split one of their new Chips Ahoy sundaes which was also extremely good.

After dinner I finally got to go to the new Ulta store that got put in one of the new plazas. While it’s no MAC or Sephora, I’m still in love. I almost never get to visit Sephora or MAC because the nearest stores are hundreds of miles away, so it’s nice that there’s this great store so close by. They had a few of the brands that I really like (Urban Decay, Too Faced, Stila) as well as some that I’d never really heard about. Its basically just like Sephora, but sells a lot more of the moderately priced cosmetics. My eyes got to linger on the Chi Hair Straightener that I’ve wanted forever (but there’s no way I’m paying over $100 for a straightener) and a bunch of other stuff that I really want but can’t afford. I ended up picking up some shampoo that I had been looking for, two Urban Decay shadows (Adore [dark purple/blue] and Heat [red] just because I don’t really have those two colors in their basic form) and a new UD Primer Potion.

The whole reason I actually WENT to Ulta though was because I finally decided that it was time for me to try the Bare Minerals makeup. Tons of my friends and a couple family members use it and LOVE it. I’ve wanted to try it ever since I saw the infomercial years ago. So we talked to the girl and she did it for me to show me how it would look. It looked GREAT and felt really light/nice so I bought the starter kit with the promise that I could try it out on my own and if I didn’t like it I could take it back for either cash refund or store credit. Once we were done at Ulta we did some more shopping at Dicks and Barnes & Nobel before heading home.

About half way home I noticed that my face was starting to itch a bit around my right eye and along my jawline. I scratched and didn’t really think anything about it. But it just kept getting worse and worse and by the time we got home I literally ran in and washed my face to get the Bare Minerals off. My skin was all splotchy and itched like crazy. It’s been about 6 hours now since I took it off and my face still feels weird. Needless to say, tomorrow I’m heading back to Ulta and taking the starter kit back. Now I just have to resist the urge to buy more stuff with the money I get back.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

I hope that everyone had a nice holiday weekend. Usually the 4th of July is my favorite holiday, but this year I just couldn’t seem to be bothered to do anything. My mom went out with her boyfriend to drive his new [to him] ‘78 anniversary edition corvette (I can has plz?), but I just hung around the house all day. We didn’t cookout or anything, and aside from the few bottle rockets set off by our neighbors, didn’t see any fireworks either. It was just like another Saturday except there was even less to do since everything was closed. I didn’t mean to be holiday dud, it just happened that way.

Today was a lot more of the same. Just lounging around and watching a Little House on the Prarie marathon with my grandmother. I ended up going out to dinner with a couple friends, and then came back here. Other than playing WoW for a bit so I could talk to Panda, that’s all I’ve done. I may go soon and watch either some Tru Blood or possibly Gilmore Girls since I finally replaced my copy of the 7th season.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more interesting and I’ll be able to find something which will occupy my time.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

Last night Mike andI finally got to see Up. It was soooo cute, and actually pretty sad (at least in the beginning). It always makes me happy to see Disney still putting out amazing movies after all these years. We also got to see previews for a lot of movies coming out which seem like they’re going to be awesome, such as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. I was hoping to catch a trailer for Half-Blood Prince but I guess we’re getting a little close to release for them to be running with new movies. I still haven’t seen a trailer for it, so I’m going to have to look one up. I also thought maybe we’d see a preview for the next Twilight train wreck New Moon which comes out in November, but no sign of that one either – not that I personally minded that….

In other news, I’ve been trying out everything I can think of to deal with my hair problem. I am plagued by having a dry scalp, but extremely oily hair. I have to wash it every day or it looks terrible. I never use conditioner (except on the very ends) but that doesn’t seem to help. So today I tried what a lot of the “experts” say, and diluted some vinegar in water and rinsed my hair with it while I was in the shower. Worst 3 hours of my life… Everyone said that the smell would dissapate as my hair dried, but even now, if I fluff my hair or turn my head fast I get a whiff of pure vinegar smell. It’s terrible, but if it works, I think I can deal with it.

My Flickr 365 photo for today:
expressing my dismay over smelly hair

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

It has been quite a while since some of my friends started the 101 in 1001 project, and I had always intended on starting it too at some point. But, like most other things I want to eventually do, I ended up forgetting about it and never did anything. So last month I decided that I would finally get a list together and start the project on July 1st. Well, today is July 1st, I have my list, and I’m ready to get started.

If you’d like to see my list, you can view it here. There are 101 things there that I want to complete in the next 1001 days. Some of them seem simple (such as purchasing something or reopening a blog) and others are harder (such as overcoming my fear of being underground). But I’m going to try my hardest to complete everything on the list in the time alotted. The end date for my project is March 28, 2012, so I have lots of time to get these things done.

Some of the things I already have plans for how they will be accomplished, others I have no clue. I think its going to be quite an adventure over the next 33 months. And of course, I’ll be using my blog to periodically update everyone on my progress and hopefully to share LOTS of pictures.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

I’m officially $150 poorer than I was a few hours ago. But it was for a good cause, since I spent it registering for the GRE. I can’t take it until August 1st because of not knowing what week(s) I may be called in for jury duty, but that means I have a month to study for it. Hopefully I’ll do well enough the first time and won’t have to take it over again (the schools I’m applying to only take the highest scores). I’m excited, but nervous at the same time since I remember how freaked out I was about the last standardized test I took (the SAT), and the GRE is harder. But I have a copy of  Cracking the GRE and Michael is going to lend me the book and flash cards that he studied with when he took the test. Since his grades on the Verbal and Quantitative sections are only slightly below what I need to get, I’m a little less worried.

Aside from the emotional rollercoaster  that trying to go back to school has put me on I also really need to find a job. I don’t have many bills right now, but the money that I had saved from college and graduation gifts is depleating at a pretty steady rate. I’m not sure how well the “I don’t know when I can start since I might have jury duty” line is going to go over with potential employers, but I’m hoping that my mom can get the inside dish from her friends on places that may be hiring. At this point I really don’t care what I’m doing, as long as I can start putting money in the back to be saved for when I have to move out again for school (since very few of the schools I’m looking at offer graduate housing).

I’m still looking at potential Masters programs, but doing so is annoying me just a bit. My number one choice school has a program which seems perfect for me. It’s EXACTLY what I want to do. The problem is, if I don’t get into that school, I won’t be able to do a program like that. I have not yet found another college in the country that offers a public policy degree that focuses on science and technology. I could technically get away with just public policy, but I know I’ll end up feeling back because this other school has the program which is a better fit for me.

I’ll just have to cross my fingers. But I know I need to stop stressing myself out over the big picture. I need to compartmentalize and focus on one thing at a time. G.R.E., Application… Then I can stress about needing a Plan B.

Originally published at My Grown Up Life. You can comment here or there.

The past two mornings have been absolute nightmares for me. I don’t get much sleep at night in the first place, so normally I end up sleeping in during the morning and catch up on the sleep that I didn’t get at night. But for some reason, the world has decided to conspire against me. On Wednesday morning, my aunt decided to call at 6:30, 6:45, and sometime around 7:30. By the third time the phone rang, I knew there was no way I was going to get back to sleep and ended up getting out of bed. I tried futilely all day long to go back to sleep, but it just wasn’t working. Mike came over during the afternoon and we hung out some before he had to get back home so I could get ready for the show.

During Radio X, I felt like I was going to fall asleep. But as the show wound down, I actually started to feel like I had more energy. This wasn’t good at all because it meant that for a good two and a half hours after the show ended, I couldn’t fall asleep. I think I finally was out around 4am. 6:30 sharp, the phone rings. It was a firend of my mother’s who called “just to chat”. Who the hell calls “just to chat” at 6:30 AM? I was able to get back to sleep, but at 7:30 The Satan Ringer went off again, and I hauled myself downstairs. My mom got a good laugh out of it beause apparently I was very disgruntled; I have no clue – I woke up 2 hours later on the couch.

This afternoon my grandmother was able to come home from the hospital, and I had to go over to her house for a while while a man came to clean the carpets. But she’s here with us now and will be staying at our house for a few days just to make sure shes okay. Then she can go back home and (hopefully) everthing will get back to normal. My cousin and aunt are coming on Sunday to visit, and I’m pretty excited about that. I haven’t seem my cousin in quite a while so it’ll be nice to get to chat (without using FaceBook).

I don’t have much else to talk about except that I’m sick (shingles-like outbreak on my face by my right eye [which is where I've had shingles before]) and that tomorrow I have to head out to pick up a couple books to study for the big bad GRE.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

Over a month later and I still don’t seem to have that much to talk about. I’ve been (unsuccessfully) job hunting, and thinking a lot about what I want to do with the rest of my life.

“Grown Up” life hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks ago when I got a summons to be on-call for jury duty throughout all of July. This really could not be any more inconvenient, since I really need to take the GRE and if I have to do jury duty then I may not be able to take a prep course like I had wanted to. If I want a chance at spring semester admissions anywhere, then I absolutely HAVE to take it in August or the VERY BEGINNING of September. The deadlines for the schools I’m looking at are anywhere from October 1 (#1 choice) to November 1. I may end up having to just study on my own. But hopefully I won’t get called for duty and I’ll be able to take the GRE in July and then (if needed) again in August.

What am I going back to school for you ask? Well, that depends entirely on what school I go to. I have three potential options in front of me, all leading back to the same thing. First option is that I can go back and get my Master’s in some Information Technology field (such as Information Security). I could also go back and get my M.B.A. since my IT degree from Juniata has given me a good background in business as well. Or, my top choice, is that I will go back and get a M.A. in International Science and Technology Policy. Whichever path I choose, the ultimate goal is for me to get into Law School to study Intellectual Property and Copyright Law. I’d also like to study such things as Cybercrime and Cyberlaw, but those are secondary to IP.

Other than the school front, I’ve been trying to make some changes in my life. I’m reading more, and trying to spend less time on the computer (which is hard since I got myself addicted to World of Warcraft again). I’m also trying to find some ways to make some extra cash, since going back to school means spending lots more money. But my mom is standing behind me in whatever decision I make, and that really means a lot to me; she wants me to be happy.

Originally published at My Grown Up Life. You can comment here or there.

I’m being a horrible poster, but if I thought that I didn’t have anything to write about during school, I have even less now. I love this place, but there is absolutely nothing to do here. The job hunt is not going well, and if I don’t find at least something soon searching at all will be futile (since I’m hopefully starting back to school no later than January and that means I’ll be moving again).

The past few weeks have been filled with movies, WoW and worrying about my grandmother. She went back to the hospital last week for congestive heart failure again, and they don’t know what’s causing it. First they thought it was her heart, then her lungs,  then her kidneys, now I think they’re back to the heart. I know they’re trying their best to figure it out, but it’s just irritating because she keeps filling up with fluid. She says it’s like she’s drowning and cant breathe… Something which I, since I have Asthma, can sympathize with.

On Saturday Nicole came up to hang out with Mike and I. We decide that a pizza and wings night in with a bunch of rented movies would be great, so thus began the EPIC QUEST OF FOOD GETTING. We ended up ordering Garlic Pizza from a restaurant called Mangelardo’s which is about 45 minutes away. We also called a bar in the same town called Alliger’s House of Wings and ordered our wings. We got up there early and had about 20 minutes until we could pick up the wings so Nicole got a tour of Athens/Sayre and Waverly. We also ended up going to Jolly Farmer to stock up on Jones Soda (which I haven’t had in forever since our Sheetz at college stopped selling it – GRR).

Finally after about a three hour trip we made it home with the movies (The Breakup, Drillbit Taylor, See Spot Run, and Swing Vote) and made a regular fun night of it. All of the movies were pretty good, even if a couple of them had massive skipping issues. Both of them stayed the night and went home the next day. The only thing that would have made it  better would have been if Steve could have come too.

But now I have a crapload of work to get done this week, so I should actually have something to do.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

Sometimes I feel like he isn’t all that happy to have me home. By the way he looks at me, or when he’ll roll his eyes when I call him “baby”. I’ve completely disrupted the lifestyle that he’s gotten used to for the past few months and it’s leaving him exhausted and extremely irritable. Like HOW DARE I come home into HIS HOUSE and mess everything up.

Before I got home Pudge enjoyed a quiet, lazy lifestyle. He only had to keep track of two people and got to spend most of his days napping alongside my grandmother. He had his 11 o’clock graham crackers, and life was perfect.

But now I’ve burst back in like a proverbial monkey wrench in the machine that was his universe. Instead of one sleeping human during the day, he now has to pay attention to one awake human and one who doesn’t sleep as much as she once did. And heaven forbid that either of us do anything while not in his presence. We might have food of some sort and if he can’t get in on the action then SURELY HE WILL STARVE TO DEATH.

But the poor thing just cannot keep up with everyone and so now about 10pm he has fallen into his “leave me alone” mood and spends his time sleeping next to the front door until my mother goes to bed. Then he lays on the first landing because I’m still downstairs and that means he might miss an opportunity for food.

Each and every day he drops sooner and sooner though. I’m sure someday soon we will have a Pudge-free day because he no longer has the strength to drag himself out from under my mother’s bed.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

It’s been nearly a month since I last wrote anything here. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to come up with anything that is even (in my opinion) remotely interesting to write about. Even as I type this I really have no clue what I’m going to be writing about. I guess I can just do a general update post… Or something like that.

I guess the biggest news would have to be that I’ve now officially graduated from college. The ceremony was on the 16th, so I’ve been home for about a week now. I finally have my degree (Information Technology and Marketing) and now I need to decide what I’m going to do with it. My overall GPA fell just short (like 0.04 short) of honors (damn you liberal arts requirements!), but I did manage to get distinction in my field. The job market is pretty much crap right now, so I may end up taking a temporary job until I can find something more permanent. Unfortunately, my college didn’t provide the greatest education possible. For IT, I learned stuff about A LOT of things, but never really learned A LOT about any single thing (except for PHP, but that was all self-taught). So I’m hoping that I can find at least something that will be a good fit for me.

Over the next couple days I have some work to get done when it comes to the Internet. By June 1st I’d like to have a new layout up here and do some restructuring/content adding, get a template around for my new blog My Grown Up Life, officially launch WhitneyFay.Net, and start The She Geek up again. This means that I have a crapload to do, but I think I’m up for the task since there is virually nothing else for me to do here at home except interview for jobs (and I actually have to find jobs I’m qualified for in order to get interviews). I’m also going to jump on the “bag blogger” bandwagon and say that I’d really like to start posting more (but I’m not so sure that it will really happen). I’m hoping that getting all this stuff done will renew my interest in the Internet even the slightest bit, because as of right now I really don’t even know why I turn my laptop on anymore other than to play Age of Empires or The Sims. It’s just so boring.

So yeah, that’s about all I can write about, and even this little bit has taken me almost an hour to completely pound out. To be fair, it’s mostly because I’ve been watching MTV’s True Life: I Live Another Life on the Internet and have been getting distracted. But hopefully I can find something interesting to do, since last night I was so bored and desperate for entertainment that I actually gave Twilight a second chance.

Originally published at whittersNU. You can comment here or there.

Even though I had good intentions today, I wasn’t really able to get much of my to do list done. I wanted to have a bunch of it checked off before tonight so that the stuff would be done and out of the way.

Of course, that didn’t happen… I did get a few things crossed off, but not nearly as much as I should have gotten done. I was able to head over to my aunt’s house and help her set up her new Internet accounts and change all of her passwords (she recently went through a divorce) and did a tiny bit of unpacking.

After Mike and I got out of classes we headed to Elmira to get dinner (we haven’t really gotten to celebrate graduation just the two of us) at Outback Steakhouse. We also went shopping to try and find new desks (we both need them). I think I found the one I want at Staples and it’s on sale right now so I may have to get it. I have more money than normal right now due to graduation presents, but I put all of it in my Savings account hoping that because I can’t use my debit card to instantly use the money (unless I go to an ATM) that I’ll forget about it and won’t spend it all. I need to start a savings in case of any emergencies that may come up and the fact that right now I have no clue what I’m going to be doing in the coming months.

One more responsibility that I inherited with graduation is that of my dog Pudgie. While I was in school, my mom graciously took care of him, bought his food/toys/treats and made sure he had everything he needed. Now that I’m out of school and home, the Pudge is truly my dog and it’s my job to do all that stuff. He has one major problem though: he sheds like CRAZY. So today I went to Petco and picked up a Furminator for him. In my opinion it is money well spent, since after only a short while of brushing him I had nearly an entire plastic grocery bag full of loose hair that came off. He didn’t seem to like being brushed with it much though, so I decided to do it in little bits. He really needs to visit a groomer and have his hair cut, but he’s so high-strung I feel like they’d have to sedate him just to do the job.

Hopefully tomorrow much more of the to do list is going to get done, but I’m guessing more things will just have to be added to take the place of everything that gets checked off. I’m definitely going to try and clean my car and laptop tomorrow, since the car is a mess and I peeled the stickers off my laptop and now it’s all sticky. But I guess we’ll see.

Originally published at My Grown Up Life. You can comment here or there.

Well I finally did it. Four years and thousands of dollars later I’m finally a college graduate. I got my cap, my gown, my diploma, and some nice little perks (such as distinction honors) to go along with them. Everyone keeps reminding me of how proud they are that I made it. Sometimes I myself am somewhat amazed that I actually made it through. College was extremely stressful for me… But now, the real stress begins.

I’m 22-years-old and I have now exited the “country-club” lifestyle which was provided to me by attending a private college. I have a degree, but all those other nice things are gone. I am unemployed. I no longer have a meal plan. In 6 months I will start getting the bills for repayment of my student loans. I have bills to pay (cell phone, car insurance, helping my mother). All of these are things which I am going to need to take care of now that I’m on my way to being a “grown-up”.

I started this blog today, the first day I am no longer a college student, to document my journey transitioning from the life I’ve known for nearly 22 years to the “real world”. Hopefully along the way I can share some insights, tips, or anything else that may be of use to someone else.

ALL GRADUATED!!! ..Now what?

Originally published at My Grown Up Life. You can comment here or there.