one week in

Only in a state job is possible to take three days off work and get an eleven day holiday out of the deal. Much less be able to do it after your first week. Upon leaving on Friday I still didn't have access to my computer or the permission to do anything independently. I did spend at least four hours doing online training courses on the lab computer, which kept crashing on me. Somehow I think this a fairly good indication of what having a government job is going to be like...

Tomorrow I'm off for the east for Christmas. Big plans to do some serious sleeping in and eating my mom's cooking. Though I doubt I'll get my most sincere Christmas wish for snow.

paperwork

Today was kind of bizarre in the way only starting at government job can possibly be. One would think bureaucracies would be orderly in their own inefficient sort of way, but apparently not. Paperwork is the word of the day. After finally making it to HR I sat and dealt with two sizeable folders of forms and regulations and such. Quite possibly signing my life or my first born child away.

Apparently quite a bit of the paperwork that flies around gets lost in the shuffle or put off. Multiple people apologized to me for a multitude of delays, generally saying something about "it's just like that around here." For example, I have no computer access at the moment. My boss failed to put in the paperwork to allow me to set up an account so that I can log on to the computer at my desk. The best however involved a single missing signature that would allow me to get an ID badge and thus access to the building. HR sent me to ID services, I stand in line for fifteen minutes, only to be told that the piece of paper I was handed needed to be filled out. So I traipse back across the parking lot in the cold, going around to the front of the building so security can let me and back up to HR. Only to be told "Oh, right...and she's on vacation." Long story short, I did finally get an orange labs badge. In the late after the ID guy promised to stay and wait for me. Skin of their teeth.

a cold night, kinda late this year

Sometimes you just have to look up, stand tall, and make a choice. Tonight I'm choosing to be overjoyed. I have some fantastic teammates who let me be as silly as I wanna be, even if it involves a tiara or flipping a flanker out of a chair during full contact musical chairs. We're loud and more than a little uncouth and sometimes we don't all get along perfectly, but dammit, I'm proud to call myself a Valkyrie. And tonight I am going to focus on that rather than the sappy songs I so happily fall into these days.But i need to catch my breath'Cause its 3am.. and i still miss someone

Gainful Employment

Seven long months after graduating I finally got a job in my field! As nervous as I am to start a new job and to head back to the bench I'm excited to have my hands on a set of micropipettes again. A state job, a leave work at work job, a not under pressure to to get results job. I'll be taking biological samples and testing them for the presence of viral or bacterial infection. Or as Jess put it, "testing things for stuff."

one door away from heaven

Plenty of hubub in the house this year and yet I still can't seem to drown out the worries of Austin, which have followed me to east coast. I love my family, but yet I'm seriously irritated half the time. Grouchy in my old age or some such.

It's bitter cold here. Last night I donned a coat and sat basking in the moonlight and the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks, looking for a moment of internal peace long after the house had gone quiet. It's all energy somehow, light, motion, sound, five year old boy... The two year old carries around his blanket like Linus, occasionally moving too quickly and tripping over it. There is love here, in this house that is finally feeling broken in after fifteen years, that's starting to smell the way I remember the cottage smelling, of old wood and dust and salt air settled into the cracks. There are answers somewhere in this, just at the edge of my peripheral vision, just beyond graspable.

deep breaths

Wake up, wake up this ain’t just a thing that you
Give up give up don’t you say that I’d be
Better off better off, sleepin’ by myself and wonderin’
If I’m better off better off, without you boy
-Colbie Caillat

Does it get easier? More than a month now and I still on occasion have to concentrate on remembering how to breathe.

Hoping Thanksgiving weekend at the cove will help. Salt water cures all and I need my family.

satisfaction

Spending time with my close friends just hanging out last night at Andrew and Rachel's was the best Saturday night I've had in a long time. It may sound sacrilegious to some, but it was the kind of satisfying a rugby gathering never seems to be. They truly are the family I've created for myself here in Austin.

Texas on the web

Greg Dean is moving to Texas! Another admission to my nerdiness, I read a number of web comics. Including Real Life, written by Greg. San Antonio has been highlighted by Greg the past few days, and I have to say that he really hits the nail on the head with Tuesday's strip.

Austin was home to some great rugby this past weekend. While the Valks weren't playing, at least we got to be there and watch and see old friends. I'm done playing for the fall for a variety of reasons, but it's good to be letting my ankle heal. Soft tissue injuries are a menace. As for those props, I'd say most of the front rows were considerably bigger women than myself. Which sounds like a challenge to get myself fit and strong enough to bring it.

salt water

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea”

Isak Dinesen

Sometimes you come across some amazing things on the web. These collages on flickr are certainly one of them.

Lately my life hasn't been something I want to blog about. Even my own internal monolouge is starting to sound whiny to me. In brief, I'm still at the bar, still without any strong prospects in my field and really not liking either. Being used to being a high achiever this stage of my life seems particularly dim, though compared to many people's situations I'm on top of the world. So I try not to complain, though the effort is rarely particularly effective.

Serious rugby is over for the fall. We lost one cup match, I twisted my ankle, and won the second, in which I didn't get to play. Defensively we've come together as a team, though no one would deny that our pack is probably the lightest club side pack in the country. What size is an average women's prop in a D1 top 16 team, anyway? Guess I'll have to pay attention when Austin hosts the Women's Round of 16 in a week and a half.