March 28, 29, 30, 31, & April 1: Work and Worry

Disney Princesses: Ariel by bunni711 featuring shell jewelry

March 28: Today I woke up kinda late again, but it could have been me recovering from my (possible) sickness.  I haven't really been feeling unwell today, so maybe I'm already over it.  (Hooray if it's true!)  I played The Sims 3 for a long time today and it was a lot of fun.  I haven't been letting myself have fun too much lately and I've been having a lot of anxiety over school work.  I have been putting things off.  I have a paper due next Tuesday and the Word group projects are due next Thursday.  I volunteered me and James to work on the newsletter, but one of the guys said we didn't need to both work on it and that James should start working on the Excel projects.  Apparently those are due on the 4th, too.  There is just too much work right now in that class.  Ugh!

Later on, I worked on my owl some more.  I started choosing the paper I'm going to use and I cut out some parts of the pattern (after labeling them all, of course).  I think it's going to turn out really cute.

March 29: Jamie came over today, but I was still feeling low.  We stopped by the library and I got out some non-fiction books because I'm in a learning mood.  I got the book on the death penalty that I had been reading last year and wasn't able to finish, plus a book on the history of socialism (for pure academic interest, mind you), and a pictorial dictionary on the history of fashion.  I'm excited to start reading them.  After that, James and I got some drinks, too.

Jamie wasn't feeling well earlier, so we had to leave early to go back to his house.  We got back just in time because his mom hadn't been planning on making dinner and we would've been on our own.  Our paper was due today on how our workgroup groups are going.  I'm frustrated because there have been some issues with one of the group members acting as leader and telling me I can't work with someone else on a project.  Maybe I'm making a big deal of things, but I'm frustrated and had a difficult time figuring out what to write in my paper.  (I also had a really hard time figuring out what to write back to him when he said I shouldn't work with someone else.  I was pretty upset, but didn't want to come off rude.  Ugh!)  I hope the prof doesn't make something out of this.  It's giving me a bit of anxiety, actually.  We are actually supposed to meet with her soon as a group because we had a bit of a late start on the work.  Hopefully things go smoothly and this isn't brought up.

March 30: I have been sleeping in for a few days in a row now and it's making me feel pretty weird.  On top of that, my anxiety about my projects is getting ugly.  James and I watched a bunch of movies on TV today and we got Subway for dinner.  I got a chicken marinara melt again because I really like them for some reason.  I've been kind of avoiding work today, but I really need to get started on it tomorrow.  I realized that I had mistakenly thought Tuesday was the 2nd, when Monday is actually the 2nd and the 4th is Wednesday.  Now things are due a day earlier than I had anticipated.

I don't know why I'm having so much anxiety, but James has been making me feel better.  He's being really understanding and I can tell he is really trying.  I think I'm letting this stuff get into my head too much and I'm going to try not to focus on my anxiety.  It's there and I recognize it, but if I keep it in the back of my mind all the time, it will only be worse.

I posted editing remarks on the business proposal today.  I had a lot of critiques (mostly on basic organization so far, but I have a feeling the language is going to need work, too).  I hope the guy I've been having issues with won't take my comments the wrong way.

March 31: Today, I started working on my memo and it was much easier to do than I was worried it would be.  Actually, I feel pretty silly for having so much anxiety about it.  It's only a two page memo and we had to analyze the effectiveness of three brochures.  Our next assignment is to make a brochure, so it makes sense.  I tried to make my memo look nice and despite the sentences being a little rough, I posted it on the discussion boards for review.  I don't think anyone will post about it over the weekend, but I'm hoping someone does so that I can get more work done on it.  I'll go back and edit through tomorrow.

Later on, Jamie's parents took us out to a Chinese buffet for dinner.  We stopped by Walmart and looked around for a while before.  We had Jamie's nephew with us and we took him through all the toy aisles to keep him entertained.  I'm sure a bunch of people probably thought he was our kid.  That's so weird.  I think I probably looked like the disinterested mother while Jamie pushed the cart.

Dinner was really good and I actually didn't get sick from it this time.  I usually do get sick from eating at this place.  I even had some ice cream, which I was sure would push me over the limit.  Jamie's mom did get sick, but I don't think James did.  He regretted getting ice cream, though.  Later on, we watched a couple of movies, including Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids.  I heard a lot of good stuff about Bridesmaids, but didn't find it amazingly funny.  Don't get me wrong, I thought it was funny and I liked it, but I guess I expected more of a The Hangover type movie.  We also saw Friends with Benefits the other day, which I actually liked.  I thought it was snarky and cute, but James didn't really like it that much.

The dude in my workgroup group was really nice about what I said back to him (about working with another group member) and about the proposal critiques.  He said he'll change some things, but I'm not sure he's really going to change it that much.  I hope we don't get points off because it is a lot longer than 5 pages (16 at the moment, actually).

April 1: Today I started on the newsletter for workgroup and I'm really happy with how it is turning out.  At first, I wrote it with customers as the audience, but discovered that it was supposed to be written for the employees.  I had to take a break after that because it meant I would have to rewrite some stuff.  I was thinking I'd have to rewrite more, but I actually only had to tweak a few sentences to make it work.  The whole thing looks really nice and very professional.  I posted a draft to see what the groupies say and to get some information about a couple of group members as far as their technical experience/expertise.  I think it will turn out really nicely.

Later on, I worked on the memo some more, trying to get it down to two pages.  It was at three when I posted it yesterday, but I was able to make things fit.  Earlier we watched Space Jam on TV and the season premiere of Game of Thrones.  Watching that show reminds me of the big fight we had that day we watched the marathon, so that wasn't fun.  I've been grumpy today, too, so things weren't going totally smoothly.  I was sitting on the couch earlier, dozing off every few minutes even though I got enough sleep (well, we did go to bed at 3am last night because we decided to watch Bad Teacher, which I think has a terrible message and wasn't that great, either).  I'm tired of being tired all the time.

I'm still working on Catch-22 but could be making better progress.  The story is strange and it's pretty much set up in sections where each chapter consists of stories about a specific character in the main character's air corp unit.  It's not boring, though, just quirky.  I've also been reading a bit of my other books, but mostly I've been worrying or working or watching movies.

We didn't go to see The Hunger Games today because Jamie was feeling sick again.  We probably won't be able to see it until it comes out on dvd now.  We've been watching a bunch of movies this weekend, though, and we got to go out to eat yesterday.  I just hope that he won't have to be sick all the time anymore.  He complains so little that I always have to ask him how he's feeling to even know if he's sick or not.  I guess we both have our struggles.

Love,
Christen

March 26 & 27: Wacky for Wedding Ideas

What to Wear: Job Interview by bunni711 featuring a pleated blouse

Timorous (TIM-er-us) adj. - Showing or suffering from nervousness, fear, or a lack of confidence [Google Dictionary]; easily frightened; fearful [m-w.com]

March 26: Today James and I made some chocolate chip pancakes for lunch, which were delicious.  I also started reading Catch-22, which is a pretty strange book so far, but funny.  Earlier, I watched James finish Mass Effect 3 and play a home run derby on his baseball game.  Apparently, there was a big fuss about the ending to Mass Effect 3, but I didn't think it was that bad.  I guess the decisions you made throughout the game didn't have any affect on how the ending turned out.  It's silly that people actually made a petition about it, though, and raised money (although they apparently gave the money to charity).

Later on, James and I got milkshakes at DQ before we headed over to my house.  We also stopped by the library to take back our movies and unload 1Q84. (Finally!  That book actually took me one day less than a month to finish.  I was pretty busy otherwise, that's my excuse.)  We picked up City of Ember on dvd, too, but I'm going to watch that on my own.

After we got to my house, we played some Skip-bo and watched TV.  I also started drawing out the owl for a project I'm going to do.  There is this owl painting my mom has that is really awesome, so I traced out the outline of it and added in different shapes inside (like circles in the middle, a diamond shape on the head, lines on the wings, etc.).  I'm going to cute those shapes out and use them as templates for cutting scrapbook paper that I will later put together as a sort of mosaic.  I think it's going to look really cute.  I got everything drawn out tonight, but I'm not sure if I'm happy with it yet.  We'll see.

We had my favorite meal again tonight (Chicken Noodle Casserole).  I had way too much of it, though, and felt stuffed full.  I think everyone ended up eating too much because it was soo yummy.  Later on, though, everyone seemed to get an upset stomach.  I won't blame it on the chicken noodle casserole.  That stuff was really amazing.  (*drools)

March 27: I woke up late today and didn't feel well at all.  I was on Pinterest in the morning looking at some wedding ideas.  Then, mom made us both some sausage and egg sandwiches which were yummy.  My tummy still felt weird, though, and I started feeling under the weather after lunch.  It feels like I'm getting a cold or something.  I took a good long nap to try to nip this thing in the bud and felt a little better afterward.  Teddy woke me up barking at the door, though.  Ugh.

Earlier I also caught up on my group work for the Productivity class.  The guy working on this project already has most of it done, but I couldn't open any of the files he posted except for one which I wasn't sure was the last draft or not.  Later on, James told me that the files were e-mailed to us, so at least now I know what to comment on.  We're missing a table of contents at this point (it's actually another proposal - yay, not).  I'm really going to dig into it tomorrow because no one else has made any editing remarks so far and I want to make sure it's the best we can do before it's turned in.  I'm not sure if they guy doing the project knows that the due date was moved up from tomorrow to April 4, so hopefully he gets the message before he turns it in.  What I've noticed so far, though, is that our organization needs work and it's a bit sparse.

I also changed a lot of the patterns I had made on the owl yesterday.  I erased the diamond and the concentric circles on its belly and replaced that with some feathers which look a lot better.  I think it looks really good now.  I was excited to start working on it, but I feel pretty yucky today.  I think I'm going to have to get some more sleep and get to it tomorrow.

Mom made me some chicken soup for dinner, which was so good.  It made me feel a bit better, too.  I haven't read much of the book today, but it's mostly because I've been so tired.  After dinner (and a bit before, too - and also during, actually), I was downloading free fonts from www.myfonts.com.  I thought they might have some free ones, but there ended up being A LOT of them.  I was kind of addicted.  I ended up downloading over 100 of them tonight - now I just need to figure out how to install them on Word so I can use them. Hopefully it works out!

After that, I watched New Girl, but ended up missing Raising Hope.  I watched America's Next Top Model online after that.  (The season finale of Face Off isn't online yet.  : P)  Then, I went back on Pinterest and found some more cool ideas for my future wedding (it's not official official yet, but we are planning on getting married).  Here are a few:

• succulents in bouquets and centerpieces (and boutonnieres)
• sparklers instead of bubbles/rice/petals for when we leave the ceremony or reception
• old books and mason jars for centerpieces
• baby's breath bouquets
• mustaches on sticks with guests names on them for escort cards
• chocolate lollipops for favors (you can make them in different shapes with plastic molds)
• stickers (and magnets) for save the dates
• s'mores snack bar
• wax seals for invites
• giant picture frame for wedding photos (that wedding party holds up)
• scrabble tiles for place cards
• paper flowers for decorations/on favors
• cookies w/ guests names on them for favors/place cards
• caricatures at the reception

That's a pretty long list, but I have a bunch of cool ideas now to really make it our own.  Most of the ideas I had before were kind of generic, but these incorporate us a lot more.  That makes me happy.  : )  I definitely want plum purple to be the main color, and I really like peacock colors as possible other tie-in colors.  Otherwise, I like the idea of the green of the succulents being the other color, plus cream.

Anywho, today has been a weird day.  I feel so tired and I probably am actually getting sick.  I don't usually get sick all that often, and now seems like a strange time for it.  Maybe it's because the weather has been wonky lately, changing around quickly and drastically whenever it feels like it.

Oh yeah, I got around to looking up my grade on the proposal today.  Yesterday I was too scared; I felt very timorous about what the outcome would be.  I ended up getting a 95 on the paper and a 97 on my graphics.  I was surprised.  I had been bracing myself for a bad grade (I had so much anxiety about it and so much trouble concentrating that I was sure I'd get something terrible).  That's the best grade I've gotten in this class so far.  I'm so relieved!

Welp, I think that's about it.  I'm excited about my new fonts.  I decided I'd really like to make my own save the dates, invitations, and ceremony programs and the new fonts really give me something to work with.  I know a wedding is something very far off at this point, but it's just fun to look forward and think about it.  I never really understood before about how important it is to put elements of yourselves into the wedding, but I really get that now.  It just makes the planning more fun!  Part of that is thinking about our relationship and what makes us unique and what we will be celebrating on that day - which is the most important part!  I know it's easy for people to forget what the wedding is all about, but I really want to keep the celebration at the center.

Enough about weddings!  Good night!

Love,

Christen

March 23, 24, & 25: How Low Can You Go?

Summer Collection 2012 by bunni711 featuring draped tops

Hebdomadal (heb-DAH-muh-dull) adj. - weekly [Google Dictionary]; occurring, appearing, or done every week; weekly [m-w.com]

March 23: Sorry for all the triple posts lately, I've had a lot going on and a lot on my mind.  Even though I've been skipping days, I'm still writing for every day - I'm not going to let this become a hebdomadal event.

Today James and I watched both movies we had out from the library.  We watched J. Edgar during lunch (we got a yummy supreme pizza from the store).  The movie was alright, but nothing special.  I think Leonardo DiCaprio did a good job, though.  In general, I think the acting was really good, but the movie was still kind of blah.  

Ever since I had that realization yesterday (about my relationship anxiety) and spent time thinking about the other things I struggle with (like depression/dysthymia), I've been able to see my own actions and feelings more clearly.  I notice evidence of my anxiety in the way I react to certain things and I can see how my insecurities come out in everyday life.  I'm fighting against them - just knowing they're there gives me more power to fight them.

Later on, we went to the store to buy some of those amazing sandwiches, but they were out.  We bought stuff to make them, instead:  roasted turkey, swiss cheese, some amazing buns, and mayo (of course!)  They were so amazingly good.  We watched Hugo while we ate.  It was really, really good.  I liked it a lot.  There was a great story line and a great ending (something that I notice is quite rare in most story incarnations - both books and movies).  

I didn't do much else besides read and hang out with James.  I'm glad to be able to spend time with him - even more so after being away and missing him the past few days.  I forgot to mention this in my last post, but James and I had a good conversation on the phone Wednesday night (before he came over to get me).  He told me all about his Mass Effect 3 game and I asked him a bunch of questions about it.  Then, I told him all about my book.  Later on, I told him all about my experience the other night on reddit and the new realizations I had made about the struggles I have been facing.  It's the most amazing feeling knowing you have someone who you can tell anything.

March 24:  We had some more sandwiches for lunch today.  We didn't pick up enough lunch meat last night, so we had to stop by the store again today for more.  We're out of movies to watch and there was nothing good on TV today.  Literally nothing.  James has been playing games a lot today, but being alone for a while is still nice.  I've been reading and wandering about online.  For dinner, we shared a box from Pizza Hut (it has pizza, cheesy breadsticks, and cinnastix in it).  It was pretty yummy.

Earlier I brought up something with James that is a bit of a touchy subject with us.  I knew when it was happening that it wouldn't end well, but I went ahead with it anyway.  It's a difficult situation, but I always seem to choose the worst ways in which to handle it.  I got pretty upset about it, though, and it just snowballed for me.  Now I'm feeling really down.  I'm paying much closer attention now to my emotions and reactions, but this still seems kind of random.  I mean, it makes some sense that I would feel upset, but the way I'm feeling now is disproportionate to the situation.  The worst part is that I feel like I have no control over it.  I am trying hard to fight against the feelings, but sometimes it seems like I just can't win over them.  

Later on, I went on reddit to see if I could find some support.  They actually have amazing people on some of their subreddits.  It's nice to be reminded that I'm not alone - I'm not the only one experiencing these things.  There are so many other people out there struggling with their feelings.  It gives me hope in situations that seem hopeless.  It might be strange to say "hopeless," but if you've never experienced these feelings, you really cannot understand.  Even though I know nothing in my life is hopeless, my brain keeps repeating its poisonous mantras.  It's just important not to feel trapped.

James is here for me, though.  He may not know exactly what I feel or experience, but he has been patient and understanding.  That's all I can ask or hope for.

March 25:  I woke up today still feeling down.  I slept in and didn't feel like doing much.  I had been thinking all day I wanted to play the Sims, but kept convincing myself I didn't really want to or that it wouldn't be any fun.  It's an off day so far.

James felt really sick last night and it carried over to today.  We're going to go see The Hunger Games next week, instead.  I was looking forward to going today, but this just means I'll have something to look forward to all of next week.  I'm pretty excited to go see the movie; it looks good.

For lunch, James and I went and got sandwiches from the store.  It's kind of funny that we've eaten those sandwiches 3 days in a row, but I'll tell you, those are the best sandwiches I've ever had.  I'd eat them every day if I could.  James went and played games for most of the afternoon while I watched Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta.  I'm not really sure why I like watching that show so much, but I think it's just fun to see all those pretty dresses and imagine trying them on myself.  We must be trained up from little girls to care about clothes and enjoy dressing up.  I don't see anything wrong with that at all.  I think sports are the male equivalent for silly interests.  

Later on, I took a long nap.  I've been pretty tired lately, but it's probably because I've been feeling so low the past couple of days.  When I woke up, I felt much better.  James and I hung out, joked around, and watched TV together.  

We saw a pretty interesting show about the poles (North and South, not Polish people).  There was an awkward moment when some polar bears were getting friendly and James' nephew was in the room, but we changed the channel real fast.  They talked about all sorts of cool animals that live on the poles, like polar bears, penguins, seals, killer whales, wolves, and even narwhals.  There was also a part about a certain type of caterpillar who eats as much as possible in the spring, trying to gain enough weight to metamorphose.  Most often, they can't make it before Winter comes, so they find a place to lie down and their hearts actually stop beating, they stop breathing, and their blood freezes.  Come spring, they just pop back up like nothing (they don't actually freeze to death), and start munching away again.  They do this for years before they can actually become moths.  The one they showed tried for 14 years before s/he made it.  There were also a lot of cute baby animals, so I had fun watching it.  Plus, I like learning things when I watch TV, strange as that is.

I crocheted some earlier and then sat in Jamie's room while he played Mass Effect 3.  I like watching him play games - especially ones with an interesting story line (sports games, not so much).  Last night, I asked him questions about the game, especially the many different creatures in it.  (I call the Turians kitties - they just look like kitty cats to me, don't ask.  Also, sometimes James and I meow when one of them comes on.  We're weird like that.)

I read while he played his game and FINALLY finished 1Q84.  Here's my rating:

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews



I was kind of disappointed in the book.  It was really good, don't get me wrong.  The story was interesting, the writing style was smooth, the language was rich - but I was let down a bit by the ending.  I felt like the ending was more of an afterthought.  I felt like there were some loose ends, or at least elements of the story that were never pursued.  The story felt complete, but at the same time, a lot was left as unexplainable or was loosely explained.  I think the story was just too massive.  There was a much more concise path that could have been followed to make the story more complete.  I don't know.  I hate philosophizing about books (and dislike those who try), so I'm not going to go on about it.  These are only my impressions and I won't try to guess at the aims of the author.  It was a good book, though. I would still recommend it.

Well, I'm glad I got a chance to sit down and write some more.  I think one of the problems in the past few days was that I just wasn't sure how to get some of the events down in writing.  I'm still not sure I did a good job of it.  My main goal in doing this blog is to be able to sit down at the end of the year with a solid copy in my hands as a journal of my life this year.  But of course, I am my own worst critic.

Love,
Christen