Wheel turning

My brilliant, beautiful, and complex, daughter has come to visit! It's so different this time, this time she WANTS to be here! We are busy bees, buzzing around trying to do things together, it's all GOOD!

Time keeps on slipping into the future. I've "officially" said my last day is 30 March, so I guess it is. It was an interesting and lovely ride and I will miss everything about it, except that one thing that is the reason I am leaving.

Things come and things go

My best man-friend, and co-worker, was fired from his job in cruel, but typical fashion, leaving me stranded at the Nature Center. His firing was just the latest action in a long line of fool-hardy, rash, and fiscally unsound decisions made by the crazy person who is supposed to have the best interest of the CDRI in mind, but repeatedly, she is far more concerned with asserting her power and authority. Poor CDRI.

Saturday, October 30th was my last day as Volunteer Coordinator. I wanted to be done with that job, but I feel sad for the good will and connections I built up, that now, will be tended to, or not, but the supremely inappropriate person who thinks she is the queen of everything. Sorry everyone, I love you, but I've had my fill of her.

Sorry CDRI, I love you too, but she is too toxic. Hopefully the community will rise up and make an unbearable noise, but I'm not counting on it.

I'm off work until the 12th of November, taking vacation time to work on the thesis. See how I am working on it?

I just discovered that this blog is connected to my twitter page, but I don't really like that because any one can read all this personal crap. Not that anyone would, or obviously, does. But my twitter page is following the CDRI twitter page, and that means anyone from CDRI could get to this very personal blog. Why do I care? Anyone in the world can read this so-called very personal blog. But I don't work with those people, they don't know me, and I don't know them.

I am working, but very slowly. And by now I am craving my best friends and our coffee club. That is still about 1.5 hrs away, so I do have time to create.

Immediate goals:
Go to bed earlier
Get up earlier
Write in the early morning
Meditate daily
Exercise daily-I've got a pretty good handle on this as long as Shanna continues to put up with me.
Eat mindfully-while the food itself is fairly good, portion control is the next hurdle.
Love myself
Have confidence in myself
Have confidence in my writing!
Cease spending energy on stupid hateful people.

Better Off Ted

My new favorite thing to watch is Better Off Ted. It nicely fills the 30 Rock spot. It's short and funny. I love the strong female characters, and our male hero is handsome, funny, smart, and a good dad.

I'm leading the service at "church" tomorrow. The Power of Kwan Yin is the title. The Goddess of Compassion, Boddhisatva, The One Who Hears the Cries.

I worked in my yard this evening, weedeated, moved rocks, raked up crap, and pulled a shit load of grass out of a flower bed. And watered.

26Feb2010

What has, and has not, been done.
I have NOT met with Dr. Ritzi, nor even contacted him.
I have looked at my data.
I have managed to make a graph that compares the bee diversity btwn my two habitats.
I have made progress on transcribing (??) my field notes.
I have begun thinking about how to deal with THAT data.
I have obtained a copy of The Very Handy Manual: How to Catch and Identify Bees and Manage a Collection.

02Feb2010 Groundhog Day

An auspicous day to begin again this blog.
Today is the beginning of the Thesis section of my blog.
Yesterday I met with Dr. Ritzi. I did not have much to tell him, I did not bother trying to lie. I cried briefly with embarassment, but it was over quickly. I did set up time to meet with him every two weeks. I feel I need that pressure to produce on me. And, oddly, I think Dr. Ritzi was glad to do it, even though he said his Tuesday afternoons were blocked for him to have time to work on his piles. He also said he wanted to meet with his grad students and this would be the time.
So, Feb 15th, we meet.
Also, yesterday I went into the lab, at Dr. Ritzi's strong suggestion, for the first time in I did not know how long. To my faint surprise, my space looked surprisingly tidy. I may have known I was "finished" for a while. My calendar was on October. I poked through my notes a bit, tried to look at the collection, but could not see the trap specimens because the cabinets are locked and I've left my key at home. Anyway, looking through my notes, I started thinking about the data again, and what the messages are. I had another appt or I could have stayed longer. As it is, I feel an energy moving in my. The energy of the bees.
Then, Gary came over and helped me think about how to do things. He installed OpenOffice for me and it has a decent spreadsheet. This morning, first thing, I sat down to tinker around with it. After fooling around quite a bit, and being freezing cold, fingers so cold I can barely type, excuse!, I finished deciding whether I want to spend the money to buy, at student discount, office 2007. That process took FOREVER, but now I have it and when I get home later I'm going to play with it. Also, Gary has tidied up the $5 laptop Rosie gave me and I think I'll be able to use it!

I have reread Ascher's article about bees in BRF, thought about how he organized his data. Read pertinent parts of several more articles.
I've written Jerry Rozen to see if they need a volunteer for Bee Camp. No, but he encourages me to come as a guest. I WANT/NEED to do that.
And I've been thinking about my bee workshops, located some mat'l online.
I've caught up with all the emails in Sam Droege's group.
I've located his The Bee Manual, 56 pgs, I NEED/WANT to p/o.
I've located my voice recorder.
I've ordered the damn epson ink.

Now I'm going to Fort Davis for lunch with dear friends.

Two days in a row I ate breakfast. Two days in a row I am ravenous before day's end.

I banged on metal for a while tonight. Then I finally ordered some cool 1" stickers to use.

I know I ate too much, too fast tonight. But, I did only sit for a 45 minute TV show. And, I could have done a LOT worse with my food. And, I washed the dishes after.

Now, it's fairly early, just 9:30, and I am going to bed:)

The hardest part of the day

Oh man. I get home from work, it's already dark, because it gets dark early now, and I just want COMFORT!

For years comfort has meant food, lots of it, and some sort of visual distraction, namely television. So, I don't have television anymore, and I totally do not miss it, but I keep myself quite distracted enough with Netflix, and now I don't even have to wait for the dvds to get here because there is all kinds of crap Netflix will let me watch for free! ANYway.

Right now I am feeling my itchy soul. Pema Chodron teaches about the itch of our ego, the strong need we have to scratch these places in our souls. And we scratch by eating, shopping, sex, food, alcohol, whatever, and right now I really want to scratch. But the instruction is to sit with the feeling, to feel the feeling. I am to breathe and face the feeling. My goal, to become completely familiar with my emotions and feelings.

I don't want to sit. I want to eat.

Plus I am "feeling" ravenous. And, I think it might be because I ate breakfast. Another great recipe from Escape from Obesity, (http://escapefromobesity.blogspot.com/ ) pumpkin oatmeal! I ate a serving, but it was a lot of food, this morning, when I usually go out without eating breakfast. I know, everyone says it's the most important meal of the day. But, if I can get out of the house without eating, and if I don't WANT to eat, then I think that is a good thing. Fewer calories I will eat for the day. Then again, maybe not. Maybe breakfast really does start our motors and we really do burn more calories BECAUSE we ate breakfast. Who knows?

My aspiration: I wish to know happiness and the root of happiness:)