Brief update

Locke has been living with us for three weeks now. He's happy, and we're happy. He's become comfortable enough with us that he plays with his cat nip toys in the middle of the living room all the time, and spends the rest of his time sleeping under the Christmas tree or in his "hobo box." He reminds me of what it means to love something unconditionally, in a way that I can't love humans. It's not a stronger love - just a different type of love.

Christmas was quite nice. There was much loot, and plenty of good food. More importantly, I was with my new family, though my family back home was definitely missed. It can't be a perfect Christmas without them. Isn't it funny how you can be surrounded by people who love you, yet feel so alone because some are still missing?

I finished my first lace knitting project on Christmas eve, but I forgot to take a picture. It wasn't perfect at all. There were at least a dozen mistakes in in ~3400 stitches. But I enjoyed making it, and it makes me want to try more lace. Maybe this summer I will, since I'll have more free time and the weather will be just right to work with airy fabrics.

Cat!

We finally have a cat!

It took some time to gather the cash necessary for the pet security deposit, but as of Wednesday we were ready. We went to Petsmart and filled out an adoption form. There was actually a cat coalition volunteer there for once, so we were able to visit with our two candidates: Holly and Ringtail. Holly is a very small, 1.5 year old black and white cat. She was nice, but had absolutely no interest in being affectionate. She was only interested in playing (and scratching!). Ringtail was the exact opposite. He's a 2.5 year old, heavy (~10 lbs) tabby/calico mix. He had no interest in playing. He just wanted to lay on our laps and purr. It took no time at all to decide that Ringtail was the cat for us. The next day we talked to the foster parents, and by 5:00 on Thursday it was confirmed that Ringtail would be coming home with us.

We picked him up yesterday, along with a carrier and other necessities. He yelled all the way home, thanks to the sub-freezing temperature, snow, and horrible wind. He was much better once we got home. We restricted him to the bedroom and second bathroom, at first. He immediately checked out his food, water, and litter box, then hid under the bed. For the next hour or so he would come out for petting, check the room (to see if anything had changed?), then go back under the bed. When we opened the door to the rest of the apartment he checked it all out and then ran to the bed again, and stayed there for a long time. I don't think he was ready to deal with having so much territory after being locked up in an adoption cage.

When we went to bed the poor thing freaked out yet again. I think he thought we'd left when we turned the lights off, because he ran to the bathroom door and started yelling again. We had to turn off our loud fan and put him on the bed between us to calm him down. Luckily, the rest of the night passed without incident, and at some point during the night he ended up on the floor next to Andy's side of the bed.

Today was much better for him. He pooped in his litter box for the first time, became comfortable enough with the rest of the apartment that he stopped going under the bed, and finally got to eat some of his canned food. It was amazing! I've never seen a cat eat so fast. His foster father said that he likes to eat 1/4 - 1/3 of a can of wet food per day in addition to his dry, so I opened up a can of Friskies Special Diet (salmon flavor) for him, and he basically pounced on me. I could barely get it onto a plate, and when I did, he inhaled it within 30 seconds! We also learned that he doesn't like fish flavored treats, but he loves the chicken and cheese flavored treats.

We're in the process of changing his name to (John) Locke. His foster father said that he's only been called Ringtail for a few weeks, so it shouldn't be too hard. It's mainly hard to change our own behavior from calling him Kitty to Locke.

We're extremely happy with him. He seems to make an active effort to spend equal time with both of us, and he happily trots behind us when we walk around the apartment. He's just the sweetest cat I've ever met. I think Andy is especially impressed, because he thought that the cat would only pay attention to me.

Want to see pictures?

Just one more thing

Good news: I found a doctor who gave me a referral to a family care center that will provide free/sliding scale service to low income families. We qualify. At least, we do for now. Still waiting for the letter from the department of health to confirm that.

Bad news: I went to the clinic and found out that my kidneys aren't functioning properly. I'm being sent to a lab next Friday for a renal sonogram. The doctor thinks I have renal artery stenosis/hypertensive kidneys. All this time that I've had high blood pressure, it's probably been due to that. A diagnosis will be good since it'll mean I can finally get treatment, but at the same time, who wants to have diseased kidneys?

All I know is that this whole situation would be a lot more tolerable if I had a cat.

Future Career in Design

I'm pretty much set on applying to the New Media program at SU's Newhouse School now. I suppose I will apply to IST (my current school) as a backup, but I really, really want to get into design now. I'm growing tired of IT support - painfully tired - and need to get back into something creative.

Since I'm not applying until next winter, I'm going to take advantage of this next year and learn about design/web development while building a portfolio. (After I finish my current design job, I'm even going to get some business cards printed! Yay!) I know there are some great designers on my reading list (Lea, Xiu, Timm, etc), so do any of you wonderful people have some recommendations for good books on design? I'm good with the coding side, but design is something I don't have a strong educational background in, so I'd like some supplements...

News

Remember how I kept my engagement a secret for quite some time? Well, I did it again. We decided to go ahead with a legal wedding, and did. We're still planning a celebration wedding for 2007 (assuming we can afford it), but now it's because we want to, not because we need to.

Also, today is my birthday. I can drink alcohol now.

Aside from school, life can be quite peachy sometimes.

More on academic pursuits

It's been over a week since I laid out my grad school options, and I'm still leaning towards the New Media idea. I talked to the woman in the Newhouse graduate programs office, and she informed me that the program typically gets about 40 applicants, and accepts about 9. That almost intimidates me, but I feel fairly confident that if I can keep my GPA up, continue to make the dean's list every semester, keep my part-time job until graduation, do well on the GRE, and pick up some freelance design work I can get in. A portfolio is not required, but I'd bet it will help. I'm already working on a site for an attorney, so that will be the first thing I add to my portfolio. I'm already taking a course in designing Internet services this semester, and I'm going to try to find more classes like that to take in these last few semesters.

Unfortunately, this semester is generally awful, and I hope it doesn't negatively affect my GPA. Maybe it wouldn't seem quite so bad if I were medicated and therefore not falling asleep every few minutes, but this is the hand I've been dealt and I really don't get any choice about how to work with it. I just have to keep trying my best. I probably won't do as well as I could've back in high school, before I had this beast of a disease dragging me down, but what can I do? There's no hope until I have effective insurance, and god only knows when that will be.

Grad school

For the past few months I've been trying to figure out what I want to do for grad school. I know, without a doubt, I do not want to enter the job market upon graduation. I'm not ready, period. Andy is the type of person who can handle it right after graduation, but we're very different. My whole life has been dedicated to academic pursuits, and it's going to be hard for me to transition out of that. So I guess I'm just putting the whole thing off as long as possible. =P

So, I've been listing possible grad school programs. Here's the short list of my interests:

Technology law - SU's law school offers a joint program with the School of Information Studies, my current school, so that in three years of continuous study I could obtain both a JD and MS.

Information management - I thought for a long time that this was definitely what I was going to do, but now I'm growing tired of constant management classes. I'm learning that I prefer the technology side of information studies, but it's too late for me to switch to computer science as an undergrad, plus I like that my degree will be more marketable.

Information science - telecommunications/networking - This is a possibility, but I'm iffy about it without doing it next to the law degree.

Graphic/web design - This has been my favorite hobby since the end of elementary school. Any hobby I can keep up with for that long must be good for me. The only reason I don't do it more often is lack of time, thanks to school and everything else.

Marriage and family therapy - I've always had a strong interest in this, and I think it's one of a very, very small number of careers I'd actually be happy with. But I wouldn't be able to do anything (that would make me happy) with it unless I continued on to get a PhD, and that may be more work than I'm up to.


I feel pressured to make a decision, since most of those possibilities would require either taking the GRE or LSAT, and at least for the LSAT, it must be taken by December 2006 at the very latest. Consider that I will probably need to take it more than once, and that means I need to start studying like... Between now and Christmas.

My preference changes from day to day. Today I'm most interested in the graphic/web design option, probably because today is my Design of Internet Services class day. It's probably also because I was discouraged about the lack of programs for it in colleges that I'd be actually interested in attending, until I discovered this. That sounds like it may be exactly what I'm looking for. I seriously considered Newhouse as an undergrad, and IST only won by a small margin. I've put in a request for information, as the site doesn't seem to say whether or not the fact that I'm not a current Newhouse/communications in general student will hurt my chances of acceptance, but I doubt it will.

It's strange to think about the fact that my student career will extend from 1987/8 to 2009 or later.