I just saw The Aviator. It was a pretty good movie, kind of disturbing. I like almost any 1940's era movies just for the style. Leonardo diCaprio really is talented to portray that kind of a person. Now I'm all freaked out to wash my hands. I must have washed my hands about 20 times a day when I had a cold. Does that make me crazy? I've never locked myself in a theater with no clothes on, that is just insane.

Cool story about quitting your job, via kottke.org. This is why my goal in life is to retire early.

My team lost their bowl game. It was sad. We watched the game on ESPN. The Miners pulled off a pretty good first half, then couldn't hold on for the second. I was disappointed, but the fact that UTEP even made it to a bowl game is pretty miraculous. We're so used to 2-9 seasons that a winning season is a huge feat. That's kind of why I like UTEP. We're underdogs and proud of it. We don't have lots of money like some other schools (cough, CU, cough). I've always thought of UTEP as more real than a lot of other schools. The students aren't a bunch of elitist snobs, they're real people holding down jobs, raising kids in some cases, living at home with their parents. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, that's just how the school is, and you can take it or leave it.

I haven't felt like blogging much. For one, I have to think about three people looking over my shoulder to read whatever I'm writing. Also I don't have as much going on as before.

Anyway, so I was watching this TV program about string theory. That is weird stuff. In string theory, there are supposed to be 11 different dimensions. What those dimensions are, the program didn't really explain. Parallel universes, like you might see in Star Trek or Quantum Leap? A world where things fall up instead of down? My understanding of this is really sketchy.

I didn't really give an update of my Christmas experience. I got some nice presents. Money, slippers and pajamas, a new CD. Everyone seemed to like the gifts I gave, too. Unfortunately I was sick with a cold on Christmas, which limited my enjoyment of Christmas goodies. So that was my holiday.

Try your hand at this year-in-review quiz in the New York Times. I scored 44% correct.

I'm in the perfect Christmas-y mood. I can see snow falling outside my window in the glow of the streetlight and it's quite beautiful. I sat down to the computer after I spent the afternoon helping my sister bake cookies- chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter. I tried to be the best helper I could, but my sis is such a pro at baking that I think I just slowed her down. Even if I'm not the world's best baker at least I got to spend time with my sister and sample a few amazingly delicious cookies.

It's so cold right now. 30 degrees. The house never seems to get warm. Things seem bleak. I laid down in my bed for awhile, cold and tired under the blankets. I woke up with a general feeling of fear, of death, of the future. What if I was all alone in this world? What would I do then?

Hi everyone. Not much is happening lately. I've been Christmas shopping. The mall wasn't so bad last week, but today it was totally insane. Traffic and crowds. I hate all that and usually do whatever I can to avoid it, but I decided to suck it up and finish all my Christmas shopping in one final trip to the mall.

I saw Finding Neverland last night. It was a pretty good movie. I'm not a huge Peter Pan fan, but I found this movie interesting. The ending was sad. I could hear a woman in the theater sniffling a few seats down from me. I managed to hold it together for once and not cry.

One more thing: my final grades are in. Three B's. Yay for me.

It has been a weird couple of days. I went to the job interview Wednesday and I was offered a full-time job. I would start in January, I would be paid a decent amount with benefits, and the office would be close to my house. It looks like I'm going to take it. Despite having some second thoughts about not finishing grad school (at least not right away), I think this is the right thing for me to do. I really want this. I have wanted a job like this for a long time and I always assumed I'd have to move to some other city to find it.

I have no illusions that this is a dream job or that all my problems will magically be solved by this. It's not even about the money. I just want to test it out, see if this is what I want to be doing. If it is, great. If not, then I can move on with my life.

So it's been a while since I unloaded my thoughts. I don't have school, I have nothing to be stressed about, really. It's amazing how the anxiety just evaporates. I made my weekly trip to Subway and I felt so pleasant and light. I usually go in there nervous and annoyed and kind of in a hurry. It's like the dark cloud that is school and my failures there has been lifted.

My sister is here and I guess I missed her more than I realized. We hang out, we watch movies together. She shows me the scarves she knits. I drive her places and ask her about her friends. It's fun. It beats being alone in the house all day, every day, obsessing over my insecurities.

I have a job interview tomorrow. It's with a big corporation, and I don't know how I feel about that. "Corporate America" has such a nasty connotation. I see myself working in a cubicle, working 60-hour weeks, for years and years ahead. On the other hand, there is money. I haven't had much money for a long time. If I was able to get this job, I would earn more money than I ever have in my life. I'm talking real money, money that could buy me a new car and get me making payments on a house. That's really scary. I feel like a kid, like I just graduated high school and I'm going to dress up in my Mom's clothes and pretend to go to work. How could I get a real job? How did I even get an interview? It shocks me, to be honest.

One thing I have resolved to do over this vacation is to get this career thing sorted out. Once again, if I get this job it could change everything, but if not, I don't know what to do about school. Now would be the time to change things if I wanted to. I could change my entire career direction. I could drop out of grad school and get another degree. As much as I've tried to shove the desire out of my brain, I still find myself drawn to writing. I would love to be a good writer. Right now I think I'm an OK writer, but I think I could be so much better. I don't know how this translates into a career choice, but that's one thing I want.

The New Radicals get some recognition from Spin magazine. "You Get What You Give" was the anthem of my high-school years and is still one of my all-time favorite songs.

Looks like I have a job interview on Wednesday. Another one. I don't know what to expect. I've been striking out so much lately on speeches and interviews. Hopefully this one will be better. I'm really nervous.

I watched the Survivor finale last night. I knew Chris would win. He is a master of BS. I had more respect for Twila but Chris was more likeable in the end. Of course I swore I would never watch Survivor again but here I am getting wrapped up in it. This group of survivors was more appealing to me than the group of snakes in the last game. They seemed more down-to-earth for some reason.

Happy Sunday morning. I just endured a Christmas musical "extravaganza". It was not too bad. Is it sinful to want to poke fun at a Christmas musical?

Hey people. It's Friday and I feel slightly better than I did yesterday. I officially did not get the job I interviewed for, which is disappointing but not surprising. I'm not going to make too much of it. But it does leave me wondering what I'm going to do about money in the next few months. I applied to be a TA. If I don't get that job, well, I don't know what I'll do then. Maybe look for something on-campus, or work retail until I can find something better. I'm spending so much money lately, on myself and on Christmas presents, it makes me nervous. Also there is not one good thing to eat in this house so I go out to buy food a lot.

I made a list of all the big events in my life for the year, and I could only think of two, and even those were really lame. How can a year go by where I don't accomplish much of anything? Maybe you could consider it a year of personal growth. It was one year ago that I graduated from college. I feel like I've been drifting since then, not knowing where to go or what to do. I signed on for grad school because I didn't know what else to do. I guess I feel like I've made a big mess of my life, I've regressed in a lot of ways. I've retreated further into shyness, I forced myself to continue in a field that I don't really know if I want to be in. I had a job, I lost it and didn't bother to get another one. I haven't forged any new relationships. I didn't travel anywhere new and exciting. The one thing I can think of that I am actually proud of is that I started working out, but I think that is about the only area of my life where I've improved. There was just this feeling hanging over the whole year, this feeling that I don't really believe in what I'm doing but I'm going to do it anyway because I can't just sit around and do nothing. I haven't been forced to prove myself, my actions haven't been examined carefully enough for anyone to see that I'm going through the motions and not really trying.

So it's Thursday which means I'm officially done with school for the semester. I gave two horrible presentations, a fitting end to a semester of barely scraping by grade-wise. Now I have a month of vacation time to try to figure out what I'm going to do in the next year or so. That's the brief version. I could go on, but I'll spare everyone the existential crisis rant.

Day 2 of finals week hell. The presentation didn't go so well, my concentration was shot from nerves and getting up early. I was unprepared because I was studying for another exam and I didn't bother to practice what I was going to say. So there comes the inevitable point where I realize what I'm saying doesn't make that much sense, I sound like I don't understand what I'm talking about, I'm reading off my notecards, and worst of all I don't know how to work the laser pointer. That laser pointer thing really killed me, standing up there pressing the wrong button, which I know I would find hilarious if I was sitting in the audience. One more hurdle to go, another presentation tomorrow. Wish me luck.

I'm so tired. I can't remember being this tired, since, well last year at this time. A three-hour final exam. The prof brought us banana bread to munch on. How thoughtful. I don't think I aced the exam, but I think it will be enough to get a B. Hurrah for a B.

I have a presentation tomorrow and another one on Wednesday. I'm not sure what's worse, the private humiliation of an exam you do poorly on or the public humiliation of a final presentation with hard questions at the end of it. I guess I will find out.

I'm so tired of overcast days. They make me so depressed, more than I usually am, ha ha. My sister is here until Tuesday, so that's cool. It gets kind of boring around here with only me and my mom. I need some drama injected into my life :=).

Anyway so I am going to spend the weekend studying, with a report and a final exam landing on Monday. Five more days, I can last through five more days, right? I hope so.

This totally sucks. So take away my alternative music, the only alternative station in town, and replace it with Spanish pop, that's bad enough. But the station's not even local, it's based in LA? It sounds like another case of corporate pandering to the Hispanic market, not done in a very thoughtful way, though.

Whew...it's Thursday. Long night yesterday. I spent all night finishing up work for my architecture class and e-mailing it before midnight. I had this dizzy weird feeling after I finished, like I couldn't believe I had done all this in one day. My eyes felt like they were closing up from too much PC time. And then just the knowing that this was it, the last day of class, the last two assignments I will ever do for this class.

A funny thing happened in class too. The guy I wrote about in my last post was in my group yet again as we played a crummy quiz game. Even though we didn't answer any questions right all the teams got a prize and got to decide who in the group should take that prize home. We rock-paper-scissored it and he won, but when the prof came around with her bag of goodies (leftover computer convention stuff) he let me pick the prize. Awww...sweet. It really was. A good ending to this fascinating saga called architecture class.

Anyway, I'm taking it easy today, not too easy, since I still have work to do (two presentations and a final exam). I'm looking forward to watching some tube before digging into those papers. I'm really sick of reading papers. Really, really sick and tired. Oh well that is a big part of grad school I guess.