Not Quite Right but All OK
This was the week of things not going quite right but still being OK.

It's exam time, and I'm still writing papers, working on monstrous projects, and going slightly crazy at work because I'm working a lot and still somehow not making quite enough money. I found out this week that the people that I work for at Harvard really do like me, but they can't possibly give me any more hours and now they're a little afraid I'll up and quit. I kind of thought that might be the situation, but I put my all into campaigning for more hours anyway until my supervisor told me he wished he could have me there more, but it wasn't in the department's budget. It's a no-go at the BAC as well; ten hours was only made possible for my position because the former slide librarian was going crazy trying to get all her stuff done. And really, ten hours is all they need me for. I just do the little things that get in their way, that they don't have time for.

So, now I'm waiting on my financial aid statement from Simmons. Once I get that I'll find out weather I need to find full time employment that pays more than my two part time jobs. The jobs are out there; it's just that with full time grad school I haven't wanted to get one, and I've been able to get by so far without much discomfort because of my partial scholarship. But scholarships don't cover the summers. So we'll just have to see what happens.

My great friend Christi Underdown was up this week. We had a lot of fun, and I was really glad to see her and hang out. She has another old friend who lives here and goes to Harvard Law whose name is Stephanie. It was odd to see them together the first night Christi was here, because they were almost exact opposites. Here was this Stephanie, who wore a lot of make up and had a Cambridge cadence to her careful Harvard Law speech, who dressed as yankees do, beautifully and perfectly, no hair out of place, professional and adult. And there was one of my favorite friends seated right next to her, Christi who I sometimes call Chaos Girl, with no makeup and her Power Puff girl tee shirt that I love, my friend who manages the Children's book store I used to work at, who tumbles around and plays with sock puppets and firmly believes she belongs to every world religion, even when they contradict each other. Yet Christi and Stephanie, the Harvard Law student, had grown up together in Appalachia, and were still friends. Seeing these two people seated next to each other made me happy; and in a way it helped me feel a little better about a lot of the contradictions inside myself, the parts of me that I saw in them both.

And with Ryan sitting next to me, the four of us ate Indian food, and we were happy!

Christi Underdown and I managed to do completely different things than Christy Ford and I had done while she was here. In fact, I venture to say that we did too much; Underdown was a little worn thin by her vacation by the time she left. There is simply too much Boston. And things didn't go quite right a lot; we couldn't get tickets for Blue Man group two days in a row, and the MFA was closed for an exclusive event the morning we went so she missed that. And Underdown really, really, wanted to go to Salem with Steph, but things got all messed up somehow. She was only here 5 days; I wish it could have been longer so we could have seen more.

And when she left, just like when Ford left, I'm left wandering around thinking of all the other things we could have done, all the other stuff I wanted to show her, and how lovely it is to have your friends stay over. I'm all ready scheming to convince her she needs to come up for October. Ford and I are all ready planning for May 2002. And this May Ron and Dinan will visit, and June is the month of Jeff, and I'm hoping my sister Sara will be here in July. But who can predict these things?

It's finals week. After Tuesday I have no school for a month. I also get to move next weekend, and that means getting my beloved cat Mr. Puck back in my arms every night. I have a lot of things to do, and I have no idea how most of it will turn out, but I have this feeling that it'll all be OK anyway.

On a side note for all you Diaryland/Pitas readers, Spring has sprung and never is it so obvious as now that most of us who write in this electronic community are college students. Suddenly all the updates get behind and we're left wondering what everyone else is up to while we ourselves are too busy to write. Well, of course we're all busy getting together the projets and papers we put off earlier to write here!

Enjoying Commonwealth Avenue in bloom,
-e