Another brick in the wall

Dehydrated I am and very very tired... The last evening of sweet Christmas leave is definitely over. A somewhat familiar and oh so bittersweet feeling came creeping up pretty early on Saturday night: May tomorrow never come! I don't even remember when I last had such thoughts. I just don't felt like going back to work. Everything felt so good and right the way it was. I had just spent the most beautiful and relaxing week with the man I love doing nothing but talk and eat and exercise and cuddle up in our beautiful newly arranged apartment. I felt peaceful. And I was out dancing. A wonderful dance night. One of the best I've had in a while. I was just so comfortable in my body and felt beautiful. It's hard to describe how I love to have people notice my radiance. It's like it makes me burst with energy. And it affects my dancing.

It's funny how life seems to play games with you... Whenever I feel confident and happy, good things seem to come up from nowhere and then, when I feel stuck in some strange place where I don't like myself for whatever reason, something dirty is being thrown at me, again out of nowhere... Last Friday, I got a call from University telling me that I was going to teach a German class on Monday night. My heart skipped a beat and then everything seemed to fall into place. This was perfect! I would be teaching a three-hour class which would take a hell of lot of preparation but still not more time than the two classes I was teaching last term in a shitty little place that was, above all, an hour and a half away from Quebec... Life would be good to me. I'd be able to get my second PhD exam done this summer, I'd get some great teaching experience at the same time and would still have a life, because my study and work place are identical. Man, how lucky could one girl be?! Or was I just that good?! Then Saturday night came along, that night that I never wanted to be over for I couldn't stand the thought of going back to full-time stress. I went to bed way too late, got up early on the Sunday and prepared my first lesson a little reluctantly, but still half-confident. Then Monday morning came along and I felt slightly sick in the morning. Was that just stress or was I actually catching another cold? I went to uni and got all the paperwork done for my job... Around noon, as I was talking to another prof who was explaining me the manual I would use, the director came in to basically let me know that they'd fucked up. Somebody (who?) had forgotten to contact some other person who would have to accept or decline the offer before they could hire me and so I wasn't going to teach the class, at least not that day. Maybe, I would hear from them in the next couple of days and almost certainly, they would be able to give me a course but which one and when, they didn't know... WOW! was about all that would come to my mind. What a Scheißhaufen! My body reacted even more strongly. It was like paralysis. Couldn't work, couldn't sleep, felt sick. Man, what a shit day! Then - last night - I get a call from my dear colleague from St-Georges who offers me his job for the winter term and wants an answer pretty much straight away. Ha, ha, ha! Getting paid less for more hours plus the traveling??? No way, is what I thought... But then the uncertainty and the bad reputation of those uni jobs wound me up and I felt another type of paralysis, this time it was rather a nice feeling. Man, I've got it all! I could do both and be rich for a change. But then I wouldn't get my project any further... What's my priority? Ideally, I'd teach one course at uni and study full-time, publish some papers, prepare a conference, present my project to be ready for data analysis next fall. Just like I'd planned for... But what if it doesn't work? Only study and be poor? Having declined  really good opportunity to keep playing the musical chairs of the German teaching community in Quebec...

Today, everything is feeling nice and smooth. I sad YES to St-Georges and still have no answer from the university. My YES, however, is not official, so if I get the uni job, I could still reject the offer and stick to the ideal scenario.

But I still don't feel like working. I'm LAZY! I keep reading road bike reviews ;-)

Neujahrspost

Ich weiß nicht so recht, was ich schreiben soll. Bin's nicht mehr gewöhnt, einfach nur vor mich hin zu erzählen, was mir gerade so durch den Kopf geht... Deshalb schicke ich einfach ein paar Videos ins Netz, die trotz Scheißqualität zeigen, was mir gerade am meisten Spaß macht...

No photos but a lot of thoughts

I know I wanted to post my photos, but I haven't even put them onto my computer yet...

Yesterday, my boyfriend said something interesting: he always thought older people feel time pass more quickly because they're always busy or because they have kids or both. But now that he feels like he's one of those people, he thinks it's only because they're getting older... It's strange to hear him talk about age and time and impressions about getting older. Because I DON'T feel like one of those people. I feel like a student! Like someone who's just starting to plunge into the "real" life, constantly shaken by all that stuff that surrounds us, someone too young to feel time slip away like in a sandglass. I always thought time would move more slowly as I grow older. Why is it that he feels the opposite? For me, I guess it's always felt faster than it is because there's always so much stuff going on in my life that I would technically need more time to manage it all. And that's still the case, unless I'm out in the wild and camping...

So now time is passing like freaking lightning. It's been over two weeks since I got back from my trip and still I haven't returned to work because I'm too busy doing other things. Obviously, these other things feel way more important. Which is why I find it hard to get back into that draining routine. I'd rather do sports all the time, and go dancing... But tomorrow, my schedule is saying: return to real life! So watch out, because you'll see me work hard and be productive, even though I ended up with a mobile phone and that ill-fated Fatzenbuch.


Welcome back!

Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt

We just got back from Yosemite... Happy and extremely tired. It was gorgeous!
I'll post some pics when get back to Québec.

Very very soon...

Funny places and all

Still cycling along, naturally...

Since those two days in hell, everything else seems so easy. However, highway 1 is an experience. Some of the hills might have scared the hell out of me about two years ago, but my new legs seem to be taking them with a big smile.

But it's not always fun. For the last few days, there was no shoulder and some of the drivers just don't seem to have a brain. All of them have huge cars though. Not a very pleasant mixture when you're on a bike. Also, we've passed through some really dodgy places. You'd think that this is where the money is, but it's clearly not everywhere... We've had some pretty disgusting campsites,too. I can't believe what some people understand as "camping". I've never seen as many RVs packed into a kind of a parking lot where they watch TV in their little "backyard" as their kids try to play on the concrete lawn out front... Quite strange!

But I'm still enjoying the ride, the views and the smell of the ocean. Tomorrow, we will get to Bodega Bay. If the name rings a bell, it's probably because of Hitchcock's "Birds"...

Lots of love!