i called in sick to work today because dan and i were going to go to a cabin in rhinelander for the weekend with one of his friends from college. unfortunately the friend dropped out due to some girlfriend dramarama and the trip got cancelled. if i would have done the mature thing and scheduled this day as a personal day a week ago rather than just planning to call in sick i could have gone back to work after we heard the trip was off, but instead i've been bumming around chicago hanging out in coffeeshops all day. and man, it has been sweet. i could totally be unemployed for a while. i think i'd like it.

i may be moving for the 3rd time in just over a year....i kind of hate my apartment and i am dead scared of how much it is going to cost me to heat this winter. i called my landlord to inquire about how sublets work, and if i can just get myself out of the deal completely or if i will still be held responsible if my subletter defaults on the rent, and it turns out that they already have someone interested in taking over the apartment for me. so i'm going to start looking at places in pilsen that are smaller, cheaper on rent, and cheaper to heat, starting tonight. i really seriously like the ukranian village so much, but man it's too expensive. and crappy. all the rental units left are just total piles, not updated, not cared about, and way overpriced. pilsen is full of recently rehabbed, fully updated NICE apartments for very little $$. the selection of fun bars is limited, but the coffeeshops here are great at least.

so...i'll be home for thanksgiving and will see you guys all then! i've been so lucky to see kristin, mara and liz (and of course heidi) this fall. i gotta go back out to seattle this spring i think. i really liked it there!

smooches,
VA

India part 2

You should totally go back to school, but don't sell yourself short, go somewhere awesome~ Mara's law school adventure is having the same effect on me it had on you (thanks Mara). I spent some time today looking at the websites for the two major universities in Amsterdam. Mara said I want to go to Amsterdam for the wrong reasons, but I disagree. I loved Amsterdam. Actually, it reminded me of you a lot Gin, with all the bikes and hip looking people. I probably wouldn't fit in as well as you, but I would still love it!

Next part of the India Saga:

So we woke up at 6:30 our first day in Delhi and slowly pulled ourselves together and headed out into the fray. We decided to just try and walk to a notoriuos area full of shopping and food and people. So we started walking. We were hassled a bit by autoricksaw drivers insisting that we needed a ride. But we didn't. We were also stopped by a friendly guy who wanted to show us good places to shop, but he swore he was just trying to be friendly, not sell us anything. We declined any intention of shopping. So we passed all the public male urination stations and got to the right area... only to find most things remained closed until 11:00am. That didn't prevent us from wandering around anyway and checking out the outside of stores and the places to eat, and the cool buildings. That an generally trying to get used to the hoge poge of things that run around in Delhi- people, cows, dogs, cat, buses, cars, ricksaws, bikes of all kinds, anything and everything was allowed on the Delhi streets.

After walking round a bit we decided to check out the bahai temple shaped as a giant lotus flower. It was pretty cool, very quiet a good place for us to relax. They made you take your shoes off to go in, and as we found out later this is normal, but I enoyed it because it made you feel more in tune with the building you were in. You can feel the marble floor beneath your feet.

After the temple we headed back to go to the fun area again and had some lunch. We did some more browsing as we headed back to our hotel (we got lost a bit, but made it).

They we backed up our bags and followed a guide who was going to get us on the bus up north to Dharamsala.

wow, india i imagine would be very very overwhelming. i do hope to go there sometime. i was thinking a lot about russian today and how mara went there and how she is so brave.

and smart. i talked to her a little last night and it got me really thinking about going back to school. i might get the big ol mba with some sort of real estate focus. there is some MBA fair in the loop in like two weeks, admission is $5 so i think i might as well go. the schools represented are mostly big ones though, like berkely, wharton, kellogg, etc. i think i am more in the league of the kind that advertise their programs on late night tv, but maybe i could afford a good one after all. mba programs are usually only 1-2 years, so how bad could tuition really be? maybe i could get some sweet financial aid too....

the best thing i did at work today was multiply 50x35 in my head with no calculator. the answer is 1750 and it took me less than 20 seconds to deduce. i was so proud of myself.

good night for now, tell me more india stories!

life/india part 1

Ginny! you are alive!!!

I'm so glad I have some company.

Sounds like things are going well for you. K told me you were visiting, and I would be all about joining you, but I hve NO vacation time left over after my trip.

I am having a hard time thinking properly, I could really use a nap, but I'm going to start going over some of the stuff on our trip...

I traveled to India with my friend Alicia, where we planned to meet my friend Jaclyn, who was coming from Korea. We arrived in Delhi after 27 hours of travel (yuck!). The best part of our travels was when we boarded the plane to amsterdam and found that we each had a personal cideo sceen and video on demand. I watched friends with money, thank you for smoking, mulan and part of the litter mermaid. In delhi we immediately found Jaclyn, which was good because we were slightly worried we wouldn't find her somehow.

We were pretty silent on the way to the hotel from the airport. Mostly I think because we were tired, and taking in all the sights. It was late, and dark, and we saw people sleeping on the sidewalks all over. When we got to the hotel we were goaded into giving our taxi driver a tip double what we should have, but it was late and dark, and a bit shady, so maybe it was, in fact, a dollar well spent.

we got to the hotel and were disapointed to find no AC, but it was cool enough with the windows open and two fans on.

After finally being able to drop off our luggage and be left alone in our room we started to talk, and talk and talk and talk. We opened a bottle of soju and some pretzels from the amsterdam airport and gossiped until 3:00am. Alicia and I were up at 6:30 am due to jetlag, and we got showered and dressed and headed out into Delhi...

liz! you are the best! i am making a promise right now to write on this thing 3 times more often (read: still not very often, but at least i'm going to try!)

and i will also email the mara and the kristin to try to get them back on the wagon as well.

so, its saturday morning, i'm at dan's house listening to npr, and dan had to go to work already. it's totally gorgous out and i have the whole day to myself to do some school shopping. yeah, there is no school anymore, but i still want new clothes. i got a super cute knit dress at banana republic last weekend that has whetted my appetite for shopping, and man has it been a while.

work has been NUTS lately. i have been intensely fed up with the incompetance of the production manager. he totally fucked up huge orders for anthropolgie and container store this week and tried to blame it on me for not having told him specifically enough that the items on the list that i gave him to product really had to be produced. ridiculous.

kristin moved to seattle! i'm going to see her for the weekend at the end of september and we are going to go rock climbing all weekend. i got to go rock clinbing for the first time this summer when dan and i went camping at devils lake with some of his friends from college. it was super fun and i got all the way up the cliff, the highest of any of the first-timers. OMG seriously i love rock climbing big time. plus i love kristin, so i think this is going to be a wonderful trip.

in october meghan skattum is getting married and my family was invited to the wedding. unfortunately dan can't make it because he'll be on a trauma service that month and will pretty much be living at the hospital. my dad will also be out of town and my brother can't get the time off work, so my mom is going to be my date. nerrrrrrdy. but my company should be paying for the plane ticket home because i am going to come in to MPLS on Thursday night and go do some sales calls to store that buy from us on friday.

there will be no more camping trips for me this summer, boo. dan has no more weekends off until like thanksgiving. we went to the bong recreation area a few weekends ago with a bunch of friends and i was hoping we were going to get to starved rock in middle illinois sometime in september too.

so my liz, do tell more details about this trip! i am very excited for you.

later,
VA

I got braids

I got my hair braided for my trip and it is impressive. It took almost 4 hours...

I'm leaving for the cities Saturday night, but not before I have to deal with the two different campaigns I'm working on and help my mom with the auction and work at Greek Fest. Plus there is work, I think we have a test tomorrow for training.

So basically when I head out of town Saturday night I'll be glad to get out and focus only on vacation.

Yeah!

You're out

I fully admit that I love Project Runway. The third season just started and I can hardly wait from one Wednesday to the next. Yesterady the creepy guy got eliminated. I felt somewhat bad when he started crying, but he still had to go. His laugh was creepy, and so were his manners. Plus the dress he made was UGLY.

I like the women who always dressed up, and the black guy, and of course I'm cheering for the girl from Minneapolis. We Minnesotans gots to stick together.

I often think I could be a designer. Despite the fact that I can't sew and can't draw... those minor details would not stop me. Also, I have no real vision when it comes to creating art, but you can learn that kind of thing, right? Maybe I should try out to be a model instead.