It's only been a week of sleeping on couches, having soggy sandwiches on a near-daily basis (coupled with over-priced and yet astoundingly mediocre restaurant food) and becoming all too familiar with not one but two different vans (my parents' and my brother and sister-in-law's) and already I feel like I've been away for a month. But yea, though it sounds like this girl is all vacationed out, such is not the case. This is so much more fun than being in school and/or going to work.

Vacations for me have always been about spending time with family. Some people don't agree, including my parents. Sometimes they'd rather just go on vacation where no extended family lives so they don't have to deal with relatives and can do whatever they want to do. I'm not entirely against this vacation theory because it's not bad, as vacation theories go. In darker moments this past week I wished I were far away on a white sandy beach somewhere, enjoying a fruity cocktail instead of having my hair pulled by a 2-year old boy or being treated like a 12-year old by my well-meaning grandma. But I figure if you're going to make a trip somewhere, by car especially, you might as well go someplace in convenient range of people you love but never get to see. Thus I find myself in dusty Nevada, sitting at my dad's laptop typing this while he tells me all about globalization and a sleek cat (nicknamed Psycho Cat) winds her tail around my leg and my nephew Tyler runs in and out, showing me things he's already showed me about 6 times today which shows me just how proud he is of his sticker book. Jacob (the 2-year old hair puller) just wandered in, trailing the cord of an electric mixer he's made his latest chew toy. He just smiled his mischievous grin at me, which means he's about to do something to Grandpa a.k.a. my Dad who has stopped talking and is now taking a little nap.

Personally, I wouldn't be anywhere else on vacation right now. Unless that white sandy beach and the cocktail came complete with Orlando Bloom. And maybe a personal servant. And a masseuse. But probably not even then.

Well hello.

The past week and a half or so was kind of a blur what with tests and packing and shenanigans (hehe, you Goldfiners know what I mean). And what did I get out of the whole thing?: I'm done with my third year of college (big sigh of relief), I'm never going to live in Goldfine again (exciting and yet sad), eggs are essential to finals week, and saying goodbye is no more fun than I remembered it being. Plus, packing up all your stuff to move it into someone's garage just to have to move it again in a few weeks is not as fun as it sounds.

So I've been living with Dave, Brian and Krista for the past few days and have been working since Monday. Living here hasn't been too bad but nothing here is mine so I know I don't belong. It's just a stopping ground until I can move into my house. The Twin Cities were calling me for a while and I got homesick, but I know that's not the place for me right now either. It's just weird that I'm here all summer when a lot of my friends have left. It will take some adjustment but if you ever want to spend an extended period of time in Duluth, summer is the time to do it. However, Duluth will not be home forever.

I credit the weather with part of this homesickness. It would help if it were warmer here (do you hear me Mother Nature? I shake my fist at you!). Strange how the weather can have such an effect on mood.

Late tonight after work I will leave Duluth round about 11 and venture home where I'll crawl into bed and be rudely awakened around 5 or so to get back in the car and drive to Colorado Springs, where we will spend the night with my Grandma, then get back in the car (along with Granny and her sister) to drive to Reno and then on to Lake Tahoe! I'm going on a real honest-to-God vacation and I get to see my brother and my sister-in-law and my dad and my nephews! Oh, and my parents and my Grandma and her sister. And mountains! Loads of 'em! After Tahoe we're heading to Helena, Montana where we'll stay with my other brother and sister-in-law. I'm pretty ecxited about it, can you tell? Except for, you know, the whole hours and hours of driving part. That's not so cool.

Anyway, there is much to be done before I can go on said roadtrip. Must get to it.

Crikey it's humid down here in the Twin Cities. Driving for what seemed like forever this afternoon down I-35, I appreciated the way it got gradually greener the closer and closer my car got to home but I had no idea what the temperature was like. Going south on I-35 is like riding in a time machine - traveling to what Duluth will look like in the future. Yellow flowers were growing on the side of the road and when I got off at my exit, there were delicate pink blossoms on all the crabapple trees and tulips were growing along Carlson Parkway. As I pulled up to my parent's house and got out of the car the humidity was pretty surprising but not unwelcome and the smell of lilacs - oh the lilacs! - was everywhere.

One final left on Thursday and why am I here? To sign papers on my house, of course. At least here I'm somewhat isolated without the distractions of friends and roommates and the lure of packing so I can get down to studying. Riiight. Speaking of, Analysis of Public Discourse is calling me.

P.S. I found a cool site/program that posts pictures automatically to blogs, free of charge! Hence the dorky picture of me. :)

Alexis, the glasses-wearing superheroine.  

Will summer ever come to the northern climes of Duluth-land? Survey says: probably not. At least not summer in the form that our Twin Cities neighbors to the south seem to be enjoying already. However, there was a raised hair-inducing thunderstorm last night that made the sky go from vibrant orange to midnight blue in a matter of minutes. Luckily the rain gave us Goldfiners enough time to enjoy Aurora's end of the year farewell barbeque that featured a large quantity of uneaten hot dogs and excellent dill pickle potato chips... and plenty o' people and fun.

Blogger.com changed their whole set-up and added a whole ton of new templates. It'll take some adjustment but it seems to be a good set-up. Plus, Amanda and I were really excited about the new templates - it was like Christmas in May for we dorks. No, of course this template isn't my own design. Who do you think I am?

Packing is fun but I hate saying goodbye. Even if it is only for a short time.

YAY!!! I'm done with my trabajo de investigacion (term paper) for Spanish! As in I've-already-turned-it-in-so-it's-too-late-to-change-anything done, not just I'm-finished-writing-the-stupid-thing done! I actually finished it last night right 'round midnight and I think it was a fairly good paper. The presentation I gave in small group in class today was not great, however, I don't care especially and I don't think the freshmen in my group cared that much either... apparently I'm the only one interested in machismo in the book Cronica de una muerte anunciada by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. At least my tema (topic) was unique, unlike the six people who wrote about Frida Kahlo and the three about Diego Rivera. Not that I don't like Frida and Diego or anything, but there are so many interesting things to write about and everyone in the class (being students de Espanol) knows tons about them already.

However, there was a ginormous lack of sleep after I finished the damn thing... I think the anxiety of the past few days just took hold and decided that even though things are slowly being resolved in a more or less orderly fashion, I really only needed to sleep 3 hours or so before the last day of class. I think I may be a little goofy today. But at least I don't feel as crazy or anxious as I did a couple days ago. With the exception of the fiesta de toss-and-turn last night, yesterday was pretty good and today will be an improvement on that, hopefully. Chelsea called and we talked about everything, which helped so much; Anne left me a really sweet message that cheered me up; and Eric (Anne's boyfriend) told me all about Venezuela... or actually just copied and pasted info. from the CIA World Factbook but it's nice to know he's looking out for me and my drug-purchasing interests. Because I'm clearly going to South America just to buy drugs.

Anyway, I'm skipping my last Analysis class with Pfauza. As great as I think Pfauza is, I just need to eat and take a nap because today is also my last day of advising and I need to be rested up to babysi - I mean - help the 18-year olds register. Besides, it's a review session and though free answers are nice, I think I can find the answers on my own. Have a good last day of class UMD students!

...and the freaking out continues

So I'm just freaking out here, going a little crazy whilst I work on my Spanish term paper. Here's another thing I've been tweakin' about today:

It turns out that the deal on my house (the house I love, the first on the page, the 1920s house I was going to live in) fell through. Well, it's a long story and what's important is that I am not moving in there on the 14th. Which is when I have to move out of my apartment. Which means I have no place to move into. Because oh. my. god. I don't have any place to live. Not only do I have no place to live, my friends who were going to live with me have no place to live and they were counting on me, I'm supposed to be taking care of this (well, my parents are taking care of this and I'm along for the ride) and what am I going to do?!

These were my thoughts on Monday when I found out. But... Mike, my amazingly determined step-dad, drove up here yesterday and we spent a looong time looking at even more houses, comparing and contrasting and by 5 o'clock we had made an offer on yet another house. (For those of you keeping score at home, this is the third offer we've made on a house.) It looks like we're going to get it, too, and might be able to close on it by the 27th!

So some distressing stuff has happened in the past week or so. Sometimes I get pretty sad about it but for the most part it's been okay. It just has to come at one of the worst times of the year a.k.a. right around finals week, when I have so much other stuff going on and of course! I absolutely need to be dealing with two major issues like where I'm going to be the fall of my last year in college and where I'm going to live. Yeah. The week is almost over and then I'm practically home free (haha, no pun intended... home-free, get it?). In the meantime I'll just take everything a step at a time and I'll make it, I'm sure. But if anyone wants to send me cookies or flowers or anything, you know... I'm just saying.

major whining contained within

I haven't been feeling much like thinking about anything that's been going on recently, much less writing about it. I've been having some crappy days and not just due to it being the last week of classes. The usual hectic rate of the last two weeks of school has been present but there have been lots of fun little sidenotes that have made the last few days pretty rough.

First there was finding out about Argentina, which may have been the hardest thing to take of everything that's happened. Probably better that it happened first, then. Suddenly I can't do what I've been planning to do for months and I have all these decisions to make and it all has to be done in a relatively short span of time if I want to be able to go anywhere. And I'm not terribly good at making decisions. Once I make a decision I'm usually confident about the decision I've made and I don't second-guess myself too often... it's the whole getting to the actual decision-making that's hard.

So now I'm stuck - I can't decide how much I really want to go to Venezuela. It's not that I don't, I mean, it's Venezuela and it would be amazing to go there and all, but I wanted Argentina. It's hard to change my mindset after all that. I've looked for other programs that go to Argentina but most start right in the middle of July. I'm taking summer classes then and it's not like that can't change but I also need to work this summer to make money to study abroad. I've thought about other countries in South America - Chile, specifically - but for a lot of those programs it's the same deal; the semester would start in July. The Venezuela program starts in the middle of August which is better. Then there's a multi-country program that would go to Mexico, Argentina and Spain. Now that would be awesome but it's a lot more money than any other programs I've looked at, plus I think I'd rather stay in one country and be able to travel around to other places (the Venezuela program would allow me time to do this).

Anyway, sorry for the rambling, it's just stressing me out a lot and I don't really know what I want to do. If anybody has any suggestions or advice, I would really appreciate some help. Hey, you guys should find me a great program that goes to Buenos Aires and doesn't start until at least mid-August (end of August would be even better!) and isn't too far below my Spanish skill-level. And... go!

So, the word on the street is that I wasn't accepted into the Argentina study abroad program. Turns out I'm overqualified. Whhhaaat? Yeah, apparently I have too much Spanish background and it just wouldn't be the best program for me. That's the reasoning behind not accepting me. It goes without saying that I was upset. I emailed the U of M Learning Abroad center on Thursday night just to ask if they had even received my application and when I sat down at my computer Friday afternoon, they had emailed me back and that's what they said. I burst into tears as soon as I saw the email. I'm still sad about it. Ugh.

But, there's a whole new game plan in progress: the woman who emailed me was the Argentina program coordinator, and she suggested that I apply for the Venezuela or Spain programs. The Venezuela program was my second choice so I'm going to go ahead and apply for it. Argentina was my first choice, for many reasons, but I'm open and I'm willing to change my goal. It's still South America, which was my overall main choice for study abroad. I suppose I should change those links on my sidebar.

School is winding down and I finally have more things to do. I have a test tomorrow and my Spanish term paper is due on Friday. I will be watching the Friends finale, of course (who do you think I am?), so the paper and the presentation for it must be done or practically done by 7 p.m. CST Thursday night.

I went to the Attitudes dance performance on Friday night and it was awesome! Aurora is the president of Attitudes and I could see the end result of all the work, time, and tears (oh, and there were tears, poor girl) she has put into it over the past school year. Plus, I got to see her dance which is always great. She did amazing work - in dancing and in running the whole show!

I'm sick sick sick AGAIN. I was sick around Easter time and I have another cold. I hate being sick. More than anything I hate having a stuffed up head and thankfully that is not one of my symptoms this time around. You know the feeling, right? Like having your head stuck in a fish bowl? That feeling makes me a very sick and complain-y person. But hooray for chest congestion! *cough cough hack*