Alas, there are no beans

I have no stories to tell. I've been holed up studying for the GRE, which I took today, for the past month. The proverbial ball is in the musician's proverbial court and he's not playing...so there's that. I'm super excited to go see Avenged Sevenfold on Saturday. And...GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!! Just don't vote for Al Franken...please. I beg you. He's not the right choice. Vote Dean Barkley for MN Senate!!!!

Maybe I'll meet my tattooed dream guy at the concert...hmm. Stranger things have happened right?? We shall see.

Baby steps

All is well with the musician. According to multiple sources, my neurotic break wasn't as bad as I thought. And I attempted to explain myself to him and found that he, after only being around me 4 times, has already figured out that I make myself nuts by over-thinking things and that I'm not actually crazy. He's very cool. I wish I was that cool. I used to be, or I am...sort of. At least in other areas of my life. Just not with him. The only thing I can say is that I've been honest with him about my feelings instead of 1) Pretending that it didn't happen, or 2) Running away. I look at this as real progress. Baby steps. Past me would have thrown in the towel already. I will not give up this time. I'm sort of talking to myself here...fyi. I'm really going to make an effort not to sabotage things before they get anywhere real. I will try very hard to let him in. Let my guard down...take down my walls. Well, maybe not all of them. The thought of this freaks me out a bit...and I'm not even sure if I can actually do it. But I will try.

On another note: I bit my cheek this morning and now I keep biting it. It sucks. And I had to turn on my heat today. Boo. Hiss. At least I waited until October (barely). I had no choice, it was 64 in my house when I woke up this morning and when I got home from work it was 63. Unacceptable. So...luckily my furnace started and I made it through the funk that emanates from my vents when it turns on for the first time. It's like stale dust mixed with moldy basement. Disgustingly stifling. I felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen. But that part is over and I'm really just feeling blessed that I don't need to shell out a grand to get a new furnace since mine is from the 60's or maybe even the 50's. It's inefficient and really doesn't have a place to put a filter, but it heats the house up in mere minutes...it'll do. I'm warm and that's all that matters.

Unstable, nervous, anxious...

Neurotic is defined, as a noun, as 'a person prone to excessive anxiety and emotional upset' or 'a person afflicted with a neurosis or tending to be emotionally unstable'. This has apparently become a good way to decribe me as a person. I've become a neurotic crazy person. I can only hope that I did not completely scare off the musician (aka my date). I've got my fingers crossed. I'm not going to go into any great detail because I really don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that I let the crazy out and I was hoping to keep it under wraps longer than this. Seriously...I may need to be medicated.

My love of statistics?

I'm not sure how it happened, but I decided to go back to school to get my Master's of Public Health in Epidemiology. Most likely with a focus on infectious disease. It's like being an investigator and you get to look for patterns and do surveys. OCD Heaven. Not that I think I have full blown OCD...just a touch. Just enough to realize that I have an actual, real and true, interest in finding patterns. I also like math (statistics) and am very interested in infectious diseases (tracking the Ebola virus...fascinating). Okay...so when I say I've decided that's what I'm going to go back for, what I'm actually saying is that I am attempting to get into a program at the U of M...not exactly a sure thing. I'm a bit nervous about that. Also, I have to take the GRE, which I will be taking on November 3rd. And so far...I have come to the realization that my vocabulary is not very...what's the word? Exactly. I have fond memories of Wordmasters (Jessica will remember that one) in 4th grade and being frickin awesome at analogies. I'm still okay at them, but they use some words that I don't know...at all. This goes double for the antonyms. How can I find the opposite of a word that I don't know? Sigh. Must study.

My brain is broken.

I can't decide what to go back to school for. I think this may indicate that I shouldn't go back at all. Shouldn't one have a solid idea before making the decision? I long for the days of undergrad where you can be 'undecided' and still apply, and be accepted, to your school of choice. Where you can take general classes in a variety of subjects until you find one that piques your interest. Ugh. I'm getting a headache, an ulcer, and getting very close to completely shutting down. I've gone from environmental science to ecology to conservation biology to microbiology to epidemiology to journalism (threw that one in for variety). I work in the medical field and now am uncertain of if I want to get out of it entirely. I like being in the know and all that, but at the same time, it's not what I intended to do in the first place so I should be okay with leaving. Also, I don't want to feel like I've wasted the past 6 years working in microbiology, and I fear that if I leave the field, I will. Talk about quarter-life crisis. Maybe I should just give it all up and become a starving artist. Oh, that's right, I have no artistic ability. Save from writing. Writing does not pay the bills. Unless you are a journalist or something, hence the thought of journalism. I've tried a couple of career quizzes online and I've been told that I would like to be in administration...does that sound like me? I think not. I took one that involved choosing colors that you like to look at and was told that my 1st occupation choice would be as a creator (non-conformist, free-spirit, creative) and that my 2nd choice would be as an organizer (conformist, blah, blah) which to me is pretty much the polar opposite of creator. Argh. I'm bi-polar. And all this time I thought I was just depressed. Ha. Ha. I may need someone to make this decision for me. Any takers?