I come from a family of worriers. We're really good at it. Experts even. My brother once had a typo in a report on Navahos or Mohave or something and refered to "brave worriers" on some kind of raid. That's what we are... brave worriers. Anyway I usually try to resist the family trait but I've been really jet lagged. So I haven't been able to sleep before 3 or 4 in the morning even though I've been going to bed at midnight or 1. So to pass all that time I've been worrying about things. I think its been very productive. Pretty soon I'll have solved all of the worlds problems. Just give me a few more nights.

It's nice to be home on th correct coast. I got in last night after a solid day of travel. I always forget how much I hate planes and plane travel. But it all went pretty smoothly for a change. Between my Seattle-San Fran flight getting cancelled and the San Fran-Sacramento train running 2.5 hours late, I was worried that there was some kind of transportation curse on me. And I'm an only child again cause eric's still in DC and Mikey moved up to UVM. First time in 20 years.

I had a really great time in Sacramento. Amy and Jon's house is a lot like mine in that, there were a lot of people wandering in and out, mostly friends of Kylie and Emily. That kind of atmosphere makes me really at home. Kylie's 13 years old so watching her and her friend reminded me so much of me and karen at that age. She was also in a play so I got to see her preform and it made me miss all my drama years and drama friends. Me and Amy and Emily had a good time shopping too. Me and Amy found me a nice suit and Emily had me try on the most sparkly dresses she could find. Emily is 9. It was fun. Then we went and got free stuff at all the make up counters. Amy's husband Jon runs a travel store and I want everything in. There are so many cool bags and gadgets.

Speaking of travel, one thing on my massive to do list for this week is Uganda. I need to sit down and seriously look at how I'm going to make that happen. Plane tickets are between $1300 and $1600. I have enough money right now but I'm going to have to stay on a very tight budget during the year. My biggest weaknesses are eating out and drinks so I really have to cut back on those. I also need to find a way to make around $50 a week. Obviously more would be nice but I don't think I can afford more than 4 or 5 hours a week. So I'm trying to brainstorm creative ways because most on campus jobs won't train seniors. It's not worth their time. So if I can cut my spending and earn some cash, I can do it.

Alright I should probably get back to the rest of my to do list. A brief excerpt....
get haircut
pack
sell textbooks
e mail advisor
catch up on frisbee stuff
call sarah
finish excel sheets......

I"M HOME!!!!

and I'm back...

For a little while. Until my battery wears out or I fall asleep. My cousin Robin took my out for a drink at the bar that overlooks the Pacific Ocean which probably would have been prettier if it wasn't so dark. Anyway I'm staying up a little longer when I drink water so that when my little cousins isabelle and brianna storm my room at 8 tommorrow morning, I'll be ready.

I'm feeling let down. I wasn't ready to leave Seattle. I was having fun. And I was busy. In the last week, there were plenty of days when I was running around til 11 or 12 at night, but running around with fun stuff. And all of the sudden I'm not busy in the same way and I'm just tired. Today I went downtown in San Fran to the museum and I could barely get the energy to walk through it. I also haven't figured out how much I'm going to miss people. There were a lot of people I really liked, but it was only three months. How much does it really matter?

I guess I've been kind of avoiding talking about Dan with any kind of specifics mostly because i don't know how much he matters so me. That's a weird thing to try to objectify. But really, he asked me out about a month ago so no matter how much time we spent together, it was only a month. I didn't get that attached. But at the same time, you always get attached at least a little. We spent Wednesday together, going to pick up at microsoft and then dinner and then we went to see Little Miss Sunshine (awesome movie, by the way. Almost as god at snakes on a plane =)). Yesterday, he drove me to the airport and then when my flight inexplicitly got cancelled, took me out to breakfast. He's great, we have a good time. But at the same time, I know that we wouldn't have worked long term even without the moving thing. It was interim. I don't know.

I probably shouldn't be writing all that in semi-public. I guess I'm a little tipsy and trying to sort things out. There are just so many people that you can like and so few that you can love. Sometimes its hard to wait for the latter when the former are there to keep you happy. Or happier.

And I'm....out

I left Seattle this morning, so I'm writing this from my cousin's living room in San Francisco. Here til Saturday and then I'm up to Sacramento and then home. Maybe this shouldn't be the biggest thing to miss, but I'm really sad because my team made the summer league finals and they're playing right now without me. It is especially sad because we had an amazing game last night against a hard team, easily the best game of ultimate I've been involved with in a while and I played so well. No I'm not a modest person, I caught a lot of tough scoers and got some Ds but the whole team played so well.

I kept busy the last couple days in town. Monday, Morgan took me and Ben climbing which was a lot of fun. I got up a 5 7 no problem and I was almost up a 5 8 when my hands started slipping. Then the three of us and alison had dinner. Morgan is so funny cause he's this nice geeky guy who every once in a while comes out with the most inappropriate comments, usually about me. I'm like "if you weren't so nice I'd totally sue you for sexual harrassement."

Then Tuesday Brett came up from Portland and we had dinner and then I had my game and now I'm chatting with my cousins so more later...

counting down

Down to my last four days in Seattle, and in true nicki fashion, its filling up fast. Tonight alone, I'm going climbing with Morgan and Ben, then me and Ben are going to grab dinner, then I'll probably hang out with Dan. Tommorrow Brett's coming up from Portland for dinner and then I have a semi-finals game. Ahh! I'm excited about all of it though.

This weekend had its highs and lows. I went to a tournament north of Seattle. Our team brought kind of a random group of people, so we played pretty badly which is frustrating. Also, my knee was hurting and then in the second game on Saturday I rolled my ankle so hard that I could hear it crunch. But strangly enough, it was that foot that started hurting really bad after that, like the whole buttom of it had a huge cramp. It was really slowing me down which pissed me off which made me play worse. By some strange chance, we won all our games Sat but lost them all Sunday, as we deserved to. It wasn't fun to play this weekend, not with that injury and that group of people.

So my team's play was a low. But at the same tournament, some of the best men's and women's teams in the country were playing. We're talking Furious George v Sockeye and Riot v Fury and tons of other really awesome teams. They were so much fun to watch. A huck would go up and you'd think "there's no way he can get that" but then this black streak would chase it down and layout in the end zone for the score. And that wasn't even a little bit unusual.

I am not ready for this summer to be over. Not even a little bit. But I do miss my friends and family, the ones I haven't seen in three or four months. I'm looking forward to seeing them. But I hate saying good bye to people here. I mean, I can't exactly say "see ya later" cause chances are, I'm never coming back.

HA! My excel sheets are done! I just made 42 excel sheets and a manual on how to appropriately use them. (warning..nerd alert). Everytime you make a mechanical drawing of a building to indicate where all the ducts and vents are, you need to include a chart called a schedule that tells you all the equiptment you need and basic stats about it. Usually you have to make these charts in AutoCad which is probably the worst possible program to make charts in (maybe WinAmp is worse. maybe). So I made it so that you could make all the schedules in excel and then stick them in autocad and they come out all prett colors. Wheeee!

Not quite ready to go back to my spread sheets

So I was reading over some of my posts for during the school year, and it made me realize exactly how unhappy I was last spring and exactly how relaxed I've been this summer. No wonder I don't want to go back to school. I was spending 16 hours a day in computer labs and libraries, fighting with Pro/ E, working hard on labs that I didn't do well on, struggling with concepts that other people seemed to understand. Add to that, not knowing whether I wanted to go back for another year, trying to figure out whether I was going to graduate, all my friends graduating, and of course, Stoops leaving. I have good reasons to get knots in my stumach when I think about Columbia. Yeah there were bright moments last semester (my amazing b day, disc golf, many hours spent playing on south lawn, hanging out with barnard friends, every time stoops visited), but for the most part, I was a freakin mess. I'm so chill right now. I don't want to lose that.

so anyway...

What I was trying to say before I lost my brilliant post somewhere in the depths of the internet is.... damn, now I don't remember. It's hard to find time to blog when your only internet access is at work. By the end of the day, I just want to get the hell out of here so fast. And when I do stay, its because I'm working to make sweet overtime pay. But I've done a lot since my last post. I'm only in Seattle for another week which is making me really sad because I've had an awesome summer. Just in the last two weeks I've...

1. Bought crab legs and made a delicious meal
2. Went up to Victoria in Canada with my mom and did all of the cultured stuff that I wouldn't do with my friends like look at gardens and museums and have a wonderful high tea at the Empress Hotel
3. Went to a firing range and shot three different guns including a Glock that somehow cut my hand.
4. Saw salmon jump up a fish ladder
5. Went to a company picnic and taught 4 people how to throw a flick, two of them were even successful
6. Ran a lot. and well. I've been able to do like 5 or 6 miles at 8 minute pace pretty easily which makes me happy.
7. Saw Henry VI at a Shakespeare in the park thing
8. Had several amazing meals including one at a really fancy resteraunt. I looove good food.
9. Got totally and completely drunker than I've ever been before with my roomates playing a drinking game for So You Think You Can Dance? So fun and so miserable the next day.
10. Played a lot of ultimate though not as much as I'd like. The other day I went down to the fields but it was all dumb mens teams practicing.
11. Hung out a lot with Dan which has been a lot of fun cause we do cool things get along pretty well. Situational friendships are so strange and yet, I seem to aquire so many of them.

See that's a lot, right? On the more mental side, I've worried about my brother, though not as much since I talked to him and made a five year plan for my life.

Speaking of that....for the first time, I'm not sure I want to do the peace corps or go have an adventure after I graduate. I've really enjoyed working full time and I'm finding myself drawn towards stability. Its freaking me out. I've never wanted a perminant home with a steady job and paycheck before in my life and now I do. Is this really me? As an extension of that, I am dreading going back to school. I'm not good at engineering, I have to take so many classes, and I just know I'm going to be a terrible ball of nerves the whole time. Sometimes I wish I had quit last spring. But its too late now. I'll have to make the best of it and it will give me plenty of time to really think about next year. And try to deal with this stability craving. Maybe they have drugs to cure it and get back my wonderlust. It could also be a factor of how long I've been away from home without my friends and family. As much fun as I've had, its hard to be away for so long.

Ahh... I just wrote my first post in a really long time cause I had a minute at work and then I lost it. That's it. I'm blogging at lunch.

So my computer officially doesn't work. Oh well. I'll deal with that when I get back to the east coast. Until then, I'll just suck resources from the office. Mmmm internet.

I rode on a motorcycle last night! First time ever. One of the guys in my office asked me to play soccer with his team, and of course I said yes. He came in later and was like "bad news... my car's broken. But I do have a motorcycle." I was like "that's GREAT news." It was kind of scary hanging on the back cause I couldn't tell how much room there was on the seat behind me and everytime he accelerated it felt like I was sliding backwards. But after a while, I got the hang of it and he was a really good driver. Soccer was fun too, but the highlight was really the ride there.

I also made pie yesterday. Well, actually they were crisps with lots of berries, but they came out really good. So tonight after my mom gets here, we'll have crab, salad, good bread, wine and then crisp. It's going to be good. And yesterday, at lunch we went up on top of a 50 floor building and saw the Blue Angels, these F18 (?) fighter planes do crazy tricks practicing for seafair this weekend.

This could be kind of a tough weekend. Not that my mom and I don't have fun stuff planned cause we do. But she's going to ask me about Eric and I don't know what to tell her. Me and mikey were talking about it and neither of us know what to do except beat the crap out of him. We can't MAKE him not be depressed or stop smoking up a million times a day or make friends or not have torn his ACL or stop fucking up his life. Maybe my parents could force him into therapy (threaten to stop paying for college or something) but how effective is that going to be? People don't turn their life around because you yell at them. And my mom would flip out. I'll probably end up telling her more than I should cause I always do and then she'll just worry more than she already is. The whole situation is just so frustrating and I'm so worried about him. And angry with him. Why can't he handle stress without self medicating and self destructing?

More on this later, I'm sure cause its very much on my mind. But for now, I have to get back to work. I need to talk to karen soon I think.