Apparently I should walk around with a card pinned to my jacket that states the following:

*Hi! My name is Vicky and I am 31 years old. I'm not married. I am in no rush to have children and am not sure if I even want them. I'm also a renter. In the city! And before you ask, I am quite happy!

All of a sudden a whole lot of people have become intensely interested in my personal life choices. I would much rather spend what little down time I have relaxing than defending the fact that I am 31 and "have no future."

Since I wasn't wearing the card at that time I had to respond by explaining that, "I do not define myself by my marital, child, or home owning status. Instead, I define myself by my own goals and aspirations. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, my goal is to live the life I have, where I live it, and enjoy the freedoms my lifestyle allows me." Judging from the reaction, I think it would be a better idea for me to wear the card!

I'm not going to panic... but the next ten days are beyond ridiculous... and to be honest the fun doesn't stop after that. I won't really be able to breath easy until Nov. 12th... just in time for Thanksgiving.

I really can't handle this schedule at all.

Here are my most recent aggravations.

Last year I tried to take one personal day before a long weekend. Someone had planned a Disney trip for that weekend and I wanted to go. Even though we aren't guaranteed a personal day being granted for the day before a long weekend I thought I had a good reason, and I don't need a sub. Needless to say it wasn't approved and I had to take the day without pay, or should I say..."I had the privilege to take the day without pay." Here's my problem. I know three people who have gotten married over the last two years during the school year. All three have taken two personal days, one even took three, consecutively. One girl took two days before a vacation no less. Another is taking two personal days and 5 days without pay for her honeymoon. These were all granted and I couldn't get one lousy day! Not fair. I'm not getting married...why should I suffer for my life choices. Ughhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Second aggravation. My boss waited a year to return a document to me to be edited. Seriously... after a year you don't get to request corrections.

I have 3 whole days to myself in October! Seriously!!! I have to get new anti-glare covers for my iphone and my first free day to do so... Oct. 11th! What happened to me???????

Never will I ever make $85,000... ever. It's hard for me to hear that that isn't a good salary :-(

I've become old! One of my assistant principals is younger than me! When did this happen??????

Apparently I work in the environment from Mean Girls. Haven't you all heard about strength in numbers!!!

I need to stop letting my brain run at 80 mph. For goodness sake, yesterday I was thinking about writing out my Christmas shopping list. I really need to focus day by day and take time to destress each day, instead of trying to get super organized. I need time to watch tv, read magazines, and relax. I am proud to say that a week into school I haven't had any frozen dinners for lunch :-)

I've already broken a couple of my resolutions and it's only day 2!

My plan of attack for the new school year involves setting small, attainable goals. For instance, counting the school days in September(18 and 1/2). This is better than 180 days! I also have some personal resolutions that I am really going to try to stick with.

1) 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day
2) Purell, Purell, Purell!
3) Going to the gym 2-3 times a week
4) Minimal use of frozen lunches
5) Mandatory blogging time- I find it theraputic
6) Monthly maintenance of communication with friends that live far away
7) Read each week (more than just a magazine) and watch one movie per week
8) Regular attendance at "Book Clubs"
9) Leaving school at school
10) Cooking more!

I wonder how long this will last?

...even believe that I start back at school tomorrow. Even though my summer was jam packed with fun stuff- The Cape, 2 week Boston "staycation", and the West Coast, it feels like I was just getting home after the end of the year party yesterday! I really don't know if I have the strength for another year. I actually contemplated "running away."

I believe that a boss should be smarter than you. From talking to my friends about our various bosses I think this formula is a simple, but effective, way to determine if you have a good boss or not. It seems like the people who have bosses that are smarter than them are happier at work.

I'm very intrigued with the upcoming "Beer Summit" at the White House. I really like the idea and think that it's a great example of what makes Obama such a different president. It has a youthful approach.

I live in Cambridge so this situation has been all we've heard about for the last few weeks. Last night I actually drove past channel 7's broadcast. I think the whole situation was totally blown out of proportion and I think it's a black eye on a city I love.

First, let me reiterate that I love my apartment. It's the Cambridge version of a Downtown Boston apartment. I'm smack in Inman Square, 10 minutes from Central, 10 from Kendall, and 15 from Harvard Square. Plus, my apartment is huge in terms of "city" apartments. Sure we pay a lot but in the end it's worth it... and if we ever have a mortgage it will most likely be less than our rent so it will feel like we are saving money :-)

We have a rather big living room and a huge kitchen! I will probably never have a kitchen like this in any other place I live. We can fit about 15 people, at least, in there. We have more cabinet space than I ever dreamed possible, which is a really good thing since we went a little overboard in Crate and Barrel and wound up with over 50 glasses of varying shapes and sizes. No problem thanks to our multitude of cabinets. Even with the absence of a garbage disposal, it is an amazing kitchen. It makes me happy and I love it. Sure our bedrooms are on the smaller size, but I can't complain since our bedroom has a partial Boston skyline view. Plus, the bedrooms are in the back of the building so we never hear any street noise. Living on the third floor has allowed us to keep our heat bill quite low.

Our apartment is rather well constructed. We never hear any of our neighbors. Even the people that live next door and blast their radio at 10:00 in the morning. The only way I knew that they did that was I happened to be in the stairwell when they cranked up the volume. That's really the only time you hear another tenant...if the stairwell doors to your apartment are open. At least that's what I think!

(I will continue later)

I'm back. So I adore living here. I wouldn't want to move. That's why these two annoyances are labeled as annoyances..not problems.

I'll start with the doorknobs. We seem to have very "mind of their own" doorknobs in the living room and the bedroom. For instance, on the day of our house warming party I was cleaning the bedroom and my boyfriend had gone out to grab lunch for us. In order to vacuum the entire room I had to shut the bedroom door. I vacuumed and was all set to clean the kitchen, when in an unfortunate incident, I became locked in the bedroom. The knob wouldn't turn correctly and I was stuck in the bedroom just like that. I didn't have my phone, but I did have a tv, so I took a break until JO got home. I yelled through the door that I was stuck in the bedroom, and after he stopped laughing, he was able to jiggle the handle in such a way that I was able to get out. Ever since then, I never shut the door unless I have my phone with me.

The bedroom door, and the bathroom doors, are really the only ones we close. But with the warmer weather (well what warm weather we have had this summer) we've been closing the living room doors to keep the cold air trapped in there. This led to another unfortunate incident last night. I was trying to bring in the butter, salt, and napkins for corn, when I got locked out of the living room. I'm not as afraid of being trapped in the living room though. It overlooks a major street in Cambridge, with lots of people I could yell too for help.

The other annoyance has to do with the neighbors. For the most part I really love my neighbors. They don't bother us and we don't bother them. They are always nice and polite. The sweet foreign family in #2 helped me bring in all of my stuff from my Cape vacation the other night. The people in #4 seem super cool...and I would totally want to be their friends if given the chance. People only live in #1 every few weeks...I think they may be hiding from immigration but they seem really nice. That leaves #3 and #6. Lets start with #6. There are three people that live there...and it's the apartment next door to us. They are really nice, a very cool eclectic Cambridge couple and a friend of theirs. The boyfriend may actually be our landlord which makes the following situation all the more difficult to navigate.

The apartment is really not meant to house three individuals. Even though it is big it just doesn't work for three people. As a result they have taken over the landings in the front and back of our floor. The front landing is an oasis of their shoes and winter gear. I can totally deal with that because once the girlfriend moved in she totally organized all of it and it's not in my way at all. What I don't like, am annoyed by if you will, is the box of towels/blankets that they have positioned on one of the larger stairs that go downstairs. It's weird and I don't like it. But they don't complain about us so I can look past it.

The back landing is another story. Again, if they weren't so nice, I probably would've gone all Jen Lancaster on them, but they are nice...and may be our landlords. (We were told our landlord was a woman who one the lottery, bought our building, and then moved to Florida. One night we were out at a local bar and actually ran into the couple that lived in our apartment before us. They said #6 was our landlord...so who knows.) While the front landing is organized the back landing is not so much. They keep their recycling out there, a laundry hamper, one of the big stairs houses their mop and bucket, and on occasion they leave dirty pasta pots and actual bags of trash out there. I actually did end saying something about the trash because it reeked and I was afraid of bugs. Yesterday I almost fell down the stairs when I tripped on a set of venetian blinds that were propped against the air conditioner they are using as a shelf. Again, if they were annoying this would really be a problem. But still, it bugs me a little bit.

The people in #3 though could be a real problem. Shortly after we moved in we had our friends over. We broke out our new Rock Band equipment and started playing. Granted it was late, and we didn't notice, so when #3 knocked on our door we felt really bad. Until, that is, his major complaint was not that we were playing the drums and singing karaoke at 11:30 at night. No, his major problem was that we walked too much. Excuse me??? I'll try not to walk anymore. We blew him off, since that was such a lame complaint. He hasn't given us any more trouble but I always feel like we have to look out for him. Lately he and his girlfriend have been leaving the front and back doors to their apartment open in an attempt to garner a cross breeze (umm...until yesterday the high for the summer was 78 degrees...is a cross breeze really necessary???) So yesterday I was unpacking from the Cape and I had my radio on...a little louder than usual because I was competing with the noise from the fan. I went downstairs to do my laundry, leaving my back door open, when he glared at me. Well, you know what? The only way to hear noise from the other apartments is when you have the doors open. It's your fault, not mine...get an ac!

He also glared at me when I went downstairs to dump the smelly water left in my vase. I couldn't dump it in the apartment, it smelled too gross. I would've gone out back but people were eating out there and I didn't want to gross them out. So I went to dump it on the sidewalk, near a tree. The vase was quite heavy and he had just unlocked the front door to come in so I asked him to hold it. At that exact moment our friend showed up and tried to unlock the door...I don't think #6 liked that our friend had a key...but you know what. He has a key for two reasons:
1) We don't have a buzzer (another annoyance) and he visits a lot
2) He can come rescue me the next time I get locked in the bedroom.

So other than these annoyances my apartment is great. And really, if this is the worst I have to deal with, then I'm living the high life!

I just examined, and re-examined, my suitcase that I packed for my week long stay on the Cape. Can we discuss why I don't seem to have any "going out" clothes...and the two dressier shirts that I did bring are short sleeved. Since the wind is whipping here, those won't do. A gray hooded sweatshirt will have to do for a fancy dinner at the Blue Moon...erghhhh! I did manage to pack every tank top I own...how useful of me.

I was just sitting on the deck, watching the early sunset, and trying to read. However, the hurricane force winds made it a bit brisk out there...and I absolutely refuse to wear socks on the Cape. Lovely! I'm trying to figure out what to do for dinner. There is a slim chance the rest of the house will arrive in time for dinner, but in the event that they don't I need a back up plan. Since I can't seem to get the stove to turn on, and I refuse to eat a microwaved hot dog again, I'm going to have to drive somewhere...and I just don't feel like it.

In all of my copious free time yesterday, and with a beautiful view in front of me, I managed to blow through Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed in one day. She is such a good writer, I couldn't stop reading. It's not that it's a great masterpiece of literature, but it is a masterpiece of chick lit...and I am a sucker for a good piece of chick lit.

Her characters are real, her pacing fantastic, and I find myself re-evaluating what I want from the characters as the book moves on. I really wish I had bought Something Blue when I was at the bookstore.

Hmmm.... indeed?

A great first weekend on the Cape. We made it down in record time...so I bought an IPhone :-) I just finished making my UConn fight song ring so all is right with the world.

We had a great time at Plunkett, although I wish I had someone else to dance with. I do think it's pretty funny that it happened again :-)

After a very brisk morning, I was wrapped in an army blanket, the sun came out and it was actually a beautiful day. We played mini-golf, had fried food, and ate some ice cream. In the words of the fun one..."We had a quintessential Cape Day." I was pretty sad to see everyone leave. I'm pretty sure most people don't go to the Cape to vacation alone, but whatever.

So now I'm playing with my IPhone, quite successfully I might add, and settling in to watch the Next Food Network Star.

I am slightly nervous that the fridge sounds like it's going to explode but whatever?

I am certainly wearing my grumpy pants today and I'm not quite sure why. Well, there are a few reasons, but certainly not enough to justify grumpy pants for the entire day...but here's my list.

*stupid wasted dinner opportunity in Harvard Square last night
*stupid, gross Indian buffet for lunch...how very disappointing
*realizing I only have 3 Fridays left to myself all summer... and spending it alone was really not on the agenda
*pulling the phone charger out of the wall and causing an electrical fire in the process. ahhhhh

I guess the list could keep going but it would be wrong of me to dwell on the negative :-) The hogarden helped a bit :-)

So now I'm tired, but afraid to go to bed alone, for fear of an electrical fire breaking out. We seem to have no volume on the tv because I don't know how to work the buttons on the three million remotes we have, and I'm hot!!!

I've also been thinking a lot about work, and how much I don't think I can go back, and that's been depressing.

Hopefully a good dance session at Plunkett will fix me.

I love BTVS. I've been on a roll with my summer promise of watching at least one episode a day. Yay me!

I spent a rather brisk morning in Harvard Square. Where is the warm weather already? I couldn't stay for very long.

I only have three Fridays left of the summer that aren't already booked... wine is always a better choice than beer!

I am slightly concerned that a rather large chunk of my summer plans involve wine. Do you think this is bad???

I can remember when Thriller came out... I was in second grade. My parents had the record... I bet they still do.

I can remember where I was when I found out he died... at the end of the year party. Our principal read the article off her blackberry.

I wasn't going to watch the memorial but it was raining today so I decided to watch. I'm glad I did. I was very struck by the message from the speeches- make the world a better place. And I actually cried when Paris spoke at the end. Wow! Brooke Shields was amazing.

I think the family is right- we need to forget all the negative stuff, whether or not that happened is in the past, we can remember Michael for being a great performer.

Al Sharpton's speech- amazing! I clapped!