athfest, baby!

this weekend was pretty sweet. i convinced mr. ben to come over saturday and inspect the ac in the car. he totally got it working (broke a couple of other things in the process, but you know, win some lose some lol) and i'm alls thankful. i truly intended to clean my home, but then i sat down and started strumming and 3 hours later, alicia came home. then rawin came over and he convinced us to shell out 15 bucks to see concerts that night. but it worked out cause he bought all our food. yay!
athens has a music festival called athfest and tons of musicians fill the streets and venues with their various tunes. we met up with cat and michael and that guy who is in his band at hot corner. she looked so cute! then alicia, rawin, and myself walked around, signed up for a free cell phone, got our pic taken by the lady there, listened to some band, stared at several people (not anything creepy...just to see if they would turn around...and they did!), had some bellini's at eastwest, went to transmet and listened to still small voice and joyful noise who we liked, went to 40 watt and listened to cinemacanica who we liked more, went to the ga theater and listened to hope for agoldensummer who i kind of liked but loved the clapping song, went back to 40 watt which now sucked, went back to hot corner and did not listen to the athens boys choir cuz those punks were not there, went to wilson's and did not drink coffee, then went to the grill and had some good stuff. we had this game goin' on to see who recognized the most faces, and alicia won cause she kept seeing people from high school (i think she was making it up, but whatever. i am not a sore loser!). then we went home, but not before the crazy people i was with decided to be drunk. it was quite funny. we did, in fact, find the car. found it indeed.

help me help myself!

so i've been approached by 2 different departments here to interview for some positions. let me take a break and say, my great good God, i've received so much favor here in my workplace. He is surely deserving of praise! cause i sure as heck don't know what i've been doing that's so great that people would like me so much and want to see me succeed. okay. first lady who approached me was concerning a (somewhat) teaching position where i would go to individual homes and teach families how to interact with their children and help them grow. that would actually be very cool. my boss here thinks i can do it since i've been an au pair before. and this was kind of her plan in the beginning: she wanted me to get a foot in the door so that when a teaching position became available, i'd be considered. the second position would be a clerical one...from what i understand, i'd be somewhat of an administrative assistant's assistant (!). either job would be an increase in pay, with the teaching position being the higher paid one. but we know it really isn't about the money (cause if it was, i'd be a teller at a bank now). i was just thinking in these last couple of days about myself and what i want and what fulfills me. i know i can do a good job in front of a computer and telephone, but can i see myself there forever and ever? do i want to place myself in a position where i have to (egad!) become transparent (cause really, you have to be real in one-on-one interactions with others). won't i eventually become bored and irritated when i have to file ONE MORE TIME something that someone didn't file right in the first place? (that's actually already begun...) can i stretch myself to create meaningful relationships with the people i'll care for? on a slightly different note, should i make myself take classes at a local community college and earn an associate's degree that'll kick up my payscale in the teaching position (assuming that i get it) almost 3000 bucks?
i shouldn't even worry...i mean, i'm not guaranteed any of these positions. they've both told me that "i've heard/seen you've done a good job so far, and i first thought to ask you," which is really so very cool. i'd give me an 80% chance of hiring based on that alone. and with the teaching position, i'd get my gas reimbursed. do you know how much gas is?? well, i guess that's one reason to be glad i'm in the states and not in europe for it's much more expensive there.
anyway.
(almost) any advice will suffice.

a couple of weeks ago

i had a fun weekend! i did counselor type things on friday night. i like being a part of that! (it's a summer camp for middle school kids on thursday and friday evenings.) i like the people i work with, and stayed up til about 1 talking to leanne and alicia about my experiences there. slept in til 830! and went with ashley to old navy and bought this cute top and skirt. i went in for shorts, but, you know. afterwards we had a picnic at the elder covered bridge in oconee county. then we watched most of moulin rouge. pam came later that night, and we went to atlanta to hear over the rhine. it was great! i even saw rachel there! talk about coincidencies...we are surely meant to be friends. hem is touring with otr, and they were pretty nice as well. we walked around little five points; cause really, how many times will one get to do that at 1230? we stopped for groceries at walmart and drove around in those carts for old people. we thought, surely there are no old handicapped folk shopping at walmart at 130 in the morning! we were surely wrong. then we had some good food at ihop, where we discovered that men act the same at 70 as they do at 18. it was really quite creepy. they gave the poor hostess a hard time! i didn't put head to pillow until 330.
sunday offered a solid 5 hour sleep, and i ended up not as late to church as i thought i would have been. afterward we went up to helen and had a picnic and tubing. now, truth be told, i did not want to tube down that river. last time i fell out and i really did not want to get wet. but i decided to go at the last moment. got stuck a couple of times, but i (and miss ashley...the rest of our actual group did not even try to wait for us! but i'm not bitter...) ended up bumming off this group of clemson guys (we travelled down the river together, and when we'd get stuck, they'd unstick us...it was great!). then the storm clouds came a'rumblin', and completely soaked us head to toe. i mean, it was a good, hard rain. pam waited for us at an "exit" since we were barely at the halfway point, and we found shelter at some restrooms. we managed to flag down one of the buses and met back up with the clemson guys. this other guy told us about how he found shelter in a spider shop. good stuff! then we got to my house and ate pizza and watched the ringer. i really don't care how much attention it brought to the special olympics; i was thoroughly unpleased within 20, and went to bed around 11. monday night found pam and i at the mall shopping for undies and shorts. then we went to the grit and had some yummy veggie food and decided to go to the movies. ashley was on her big date with ryan and joined us, but not before we stopped at chuck e. cheese for some skeeball and got ourselves knocked up with cotton candy and a slinky. we saw "v for vendetta", stayed till after the credits, stayed till after they shut off the lights and all the employees went home. seriously though: bad customer service. we played a couple of rounds of ultimate mortal kombat...we kept trying to finish each other off at the end but to no avail. and i left my purse in ryan's car, so we got to see where he lives. tonight should be fun; we have a softball game and afterwards we're playing games. i like games.