my head

this is from my CT scan...kind of fun to see your head. check out those fillings! the CT scan came out alright, still need more tests to see if i actually had a seizure.

survey says...

...what is your best way to cope with stress...comments appreciated!!!

huh?

i have no idea what happened. i tried posting yesterday and it always came up with an error. but now those posts are there, so you have several different versions. weird.

tha nazi camp counselor has returned...

...and he is exhausted. let's back up a little bit, though. beth got married to ewan on march 18. she was a beautiful bride.















her wedding dress was very similar to her senior prom dress and we went together so this picture is kind of funny to me.
ok, moving onto last week. there is really no reason, heatherfeather, to be afraid of "the business side of fritz." this fritz is just as caring, nurturing, fun, collaborative, and frank as...the other fritz???
i hope that some people got a wake up call about the following things:
(a) in cities like DC and new york, you have to walk a lot
(b) when you have a lot of appointments, sometimes you have to HURRY as not to embarass yourself by being late
(c) hurrying involves moving fast
(d) five inch heels are not necessarily conducive to any of the above
unfortunately, i had to be the one to impart these realities. sorry.
here's me at the UN. there's actually no feed coming through the earpiece, but it's kind of a fun picture.

the nazi camp counselor has returned...

an he is exhausted. heatherfeather says she is scared of "business fritz". i don't think there is really any reason to be scared. yes, i have high expectation, but they're not unreasonable for anyone in the their mid-20's. in fact, i am a rather enjoyable person to work with (ok, not at 8 am probably, but after i have some fuel i.e. coffee in the tank, i am quite nice, courteous, collaborative, supportive, understanding). yes, there are times when i have to be a bad ass. we all do. but this is usually when someone does something injust or doesn't hold up their end of the bargain when there have been clearly defined expectations and i feel it is quite appropriate to call someone on it. in my opinion, there is not enough of this today. we're so focussed on being nice. well, being nice all the time quite frankly doesn't help get things done always and it doesn't help people grow. all those people you've worked with who you think, "how the heck did they get into that position?" probably never had someone be honest with them and thus have never grown and have simply contributed to further disfunctionality. my gift in the past week (haha) has been to show people that, in cities like DC and New York:
(a) you have to walk places
(b) sometimes you have to hurry in places like this
(c) as a result, you have to walk faster than strolling from your car on campus to a class where the professor probably doesn't really care if you are on time
(d) five in heels are probably not condusive to any of these.
but in the end, people probably just think i expect things that are unreasonable which is probably why everyone clapped for all of the other organizers except for me. that was a great feeling.
also please realize that if you are aware of the above but happen to be present when "business fritz" comes out, that you shouldn't take it personally and realize that maybe you are not the problem.
here i am at the UN general assembly. there is actually no feed, but it is kind of a fun picture i think.

more tales from the nazi camp counselor

our last event this past week was dinner with a very high ranking diplomat from a country which shall remain unnamed. at the end, my colleagues thanked the other organizers and named our names and people clapped, except for me. a great feeling. whatever, i was on the phone anyway. i know i did my job (hey, you got places and you got there on time. maybe you have learned now that 5" heels are not so practical in DC and New York!) oh well. i was so glad to leave NYC--i'm not a huge fan of the city. this probably sounds horrible to many of you, but it is just a ridiculous place to me. i know it has a lot to offer, but the expense and hecticness of it all just doesn't seem worth it to me.
here i am in the UN general assembly:















there actually was no feed coming through the earpiece, but i just thought it would be kind of a fun picture.
so now i am totally, totally exhausted. i cannot believe the quarter starts tomorrow already. i am not sure i have the reserves to do it. i am sure everything will be alright.
nawa was not as thrilled to see me as i had expected. she was just kind of like "hey, oh, you're back." i was a little upset by this, but she still seems to love me. she has started her spring shedding which is just ridiculous. so if you see me covered in dog hair...you know why.
beth and ewan's wedding was very nice and the reception was spectacular. i am very happy for them. here i am with beth:















she was a beautiful bride.
kaka and frick are moving to seattle, which is kind of funny. my friends are slowly graduating and leaving denver. june will be worse. by august, i will be all alone for my last quarter.
sorry, i am kind of in a mood of dispair. i'll be over it soon.

i'm a camp counselor

i've been in DC for two days...i am exhausted...i thought that herding around graduate students, who are actually my peers would be easy. instead, i feel like the nazi camp counselor. i'm sorry, if you're in grad school on this type of trip, it is your responsibility to be somewhere on time, your responsibility to be ready to leave on time. not ready? not there? too bad! oh, am i walking too fast? could it be you need to need to get your ass in gear? seriously, don't bitch at me for having to walk ten blocks. oh? your shoes are uncomfortable? sounds like a bad decision to me. besides, my stylish but void-of-support italian shoes ain't too comfortable either. face it, it's the price of style in the city.
but otherwise i am having fun,

house, you are dead to me

i'm in p-town for a few days before heading off to dc/new york to hoof it around during the real spring break. i flew in last night very late and crashed until late this morning when LEJ called me and told me to get my ass out of bed. technically, i am still not on vacation. i am two-thirds finished with one paper which i WILL finish tonight and will complete the other one tomorrow.

my parents are selling their house and moving to iowa. there is a sign in front with pretty brochures. the realtor made them clear out most of the house--it is sparsely furnished and there is nothing on the walls except for one non-descript picture. it looks like a show house and it feels like a show house, like no one has ever lived here. it's worse than living in a hotel, because you can't make a mess of any kind. it is extremely clear--all the clutter i am used to is gone. and as a result, the house feels dead to me. it's a shell-- not a home like it used to be. i suppose, though, that this makes it easier to leave. having the house all empty seems to have taken away all the memories--good and bad. it's no longer my home.

i miss nawa. i hope she is not scared with all the new people she is meeting. at least she didn't have to fly anywhere this time.

would any of you like the explain the key differences between the current legal regime for global trade and that for global investment? me neither.

small victory

25 pages down, 30 to go. i can do it, right? i am so screwed.

realization

as i stood in front of the sink this morning, having that "oh shit" feeling because i overslept, i looked down and saw my ring which i have not been wearing for a few days. it is my ring from namibia with the people and animals on it. when people ask about it, i tell them i always wear the people on top because they are the most important. and it hit me. since i have been in graduate school, i have totally lost sight of my focus. i find this ironic, since graduate school is supposed to focus you, right? but between taking 18 credits every quarter and working 35 hours a week, keeping my head above water seems to be the only thing i have the time and energy to think about. frankly, what goes on in my head when i am not working or studying is how the hell am i going to pay my bills this month? and i can't wait to be done and make some money. i'm not thinking about the next library in africa the name foundation will set up or how i can find volunteers to do teacher training or what a sustainable business venture i could pursue in africa might be. and i feel a little guilty about this.
at the same time, i guess i shouldn't because really, i need to be able to take care of myself in order to take care of others, right? and i suppose that was the whole idea behind grad school: the MBA would allow me to be financially secure, the MA would later enble me to do the work i am really passionate about (though not to say financially secure work is not satisfying for me--i love doing business).
when i was working in berlin, in the evenings and weekends, i volunteered. i took weeks at a time off to go and do consulting in namibia for no real money (it wasn't totally volunteer, but it was slave wages just to cover incidentals). i used to do stuff. i don't do anything anymore.
i guess i need to give myself a break. this is temporary. once i am back to "real life" things will be different. grad school is not real life. so few people go to grad school or have the opportunity to and it seems that most of them who do nowadays are bankrolled by someone else. so if i don't have the time or energy to be involved in things, it is okay.
i guess my realization was that this is okay, but at the same time, not to lose sight of the ultimate reason i am doing this. i hadn't lost my focus, i just lost sight of it, if that makes sense.
this is, after all, the reason i bought this ring. i knew that life would take me away from namibia and africa for a time, so i would carry it with me. i just temporarily forgot what i was carrying.

same, same?

nawa usually wakes me up at 6:30 to go out in the morning. i take her out, feed her, and crash for another hour. this morning, she woke we up and i looked at the clock--it said 6:03. i looked at her "Nawa, it's 6:03!!!"
nawa gave me that look. I knew she was thinking "Same, same?"
apparently, i have a dog with dyslexia. 6:03 is not the same thing as 6:30, miss dog.
it is amazing how much 27 minutes mean to you on a tuesday morning.

last little bit of procrastination

As usual, I am stealing these listy things from heatherfeather before I get down to work.

7 is a lucky number

7 things to do before i die:

1. write at least one book
2. pay off my grad school loans
3. get married
4. have children
5. have a home in africa
6. spend two weeks in a villa in italy with good friends
7. achieve total world domination (just kidding)

7 things i cannot do:

1. ski
2. go to sleep easily
3. surf
4. cross my eyes
5. play the guitar
6. give up coffee
7. watch TV and read economic literature at the same time

7 things i say most often:

1. dude
2. j/k
3. what's it?
4. the f-word
5. ach!
6. freaking
7. man

7 books i love:

1. gather together in my name--maya angelou
2. demian--hermann hesse
3. the prophet--kahlil gibran
4. unter dem rad--hermann hesse
5. youth--j.m. coetzee
6. emil und die detektiven--erich kaestner
7. rivonia's children--glenn frankel

7 movies i can watch again and again:

1. under the tuscan sun
2. dr. zhivago
3. pride and prejudice (a&e/bbc version)
4. cry freedom
5. the best man
6. good bye lenin
7. drop dead gorgeous

sorry to be a copy cat (again!) man, that was great use of 15 minutes (hey, I had to think about some of this stuff!)

students

when you're a para-professional at a university and you're young like me, you pray that you don't see any of your students when you go out. so you do things like not go out to places around campus and generally seek out places that would not appeal to undergraduates. in the past, this has worked well. but since i returned from south africa, every time i've gone out (well, almost) i have seen students. i feel like for them it is like when you were in elementary school and saw your teacher at the grocery store, amazed that he or she actually had an existence away from school. i always feel weird about this. i feel like i am setting a bad example. it happened again last night, downtown, TWICE. it just makes me feel icky.

sunny day

this morning is absolutely beautiful--the sky is clear and it is warm. i am even wearing shorts and sandals. nawa and i walked over to the new (v. cool, btw) starbucks on evans and got a frappucino (well, i did, she got nuthin', sorry doggie.). but she smiled during the whole walk and seemed very happy (though, as kaka pointed out, do dogs really smile? i think i can at least pretend.)
here's a nawa picture, just for fun! that looks like a smile to me!!! sorry, though, i don't really know how to make her blue or green or pink like heatherfeather would.















but now i am in the library and must write an international trade paper.

krauetle's birthday present arrived today. we always, always get each other books we think the other needs for self-enlightenment. he got me "Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismuses" by Max Weber (the protestant work ethik and the spirit of capitalism). some nice light reading I recall L-J having to read as a socilogy major in undergrad. krauetle's inscription in the book was "so that you don't forget where our wealth comes from." thanks, dude. something for my spring break, right? i'll get to it after i read a few back issues of people magazine, i promise.
it is funny because he and i have very similar world views, but our slants have kind of reversed since we became friends. i used to be more about creating change through NGOs etc. and he was all about making change through corporations. now, he wants to get a docterate in political science and i am all about entering the corporate world. our views are the same, but we see different channels as being the most fruitful. i am not sure exactly why. for me, i know a lot of my disillusionment came from my fulbright research project which examined evaluation methods in foreign aid organizations and i just saw how ineffective many of these were in terms of achieving measurable results and addressing the roots of the problems. i don't know, it is something i may go back to someday which is why i am getting a degree in international studies in addition to an MBA, but frankly, right now, I just want to be able to pay my bills for once because this whole juggling everything between pathetic paychecks is getting real old, real fast.

the undergrads at DU have been chalking the sidewalks lately to advertise various events. since it never rains in denver, these advertisements stick around forever. it reminds me how at PLU, we had to get up at dawn on the day of an event to chalk because doing it the day before would be futile since it was sure to rain and wash the chalk away. chalking in denver is like having a permanent billboard (but on the ground). i would love some rain. i feel like i have forgotten what rain is like.

ok, onto the EU-South Africa free trade agreement.

hours of swedish entertainment

so i was looking through the IKEA Germany site at furniture and they have this thing called "frag einfach Anna!" which means "just ask Anna!" and it is a virtual chat bot, pictured below (sorry for the poor quality) that answers questions about stuff like furniture, etc. but you can also ask her stuff like, "what is your name? how old are you?" etc. but if you ask her something like "do you have a boyfriend?" she gets all pissy and say "sorry, i can only answer IKEA related questions."

besides the chat bot being entertaining in itself, i find it terribly amusing that THE SWEDE's name is Anna as well, though she is way cooler than this Anna, for sure. it's like, Anna is the stereotypical name for Swedish women. erin writes about the swede sometimes, check it out.


anyway, i checked and the US site for IKEA has an Anna, too. she is not as hot as the german anna, and she refuses to answer any personal questions at all. she is a little cranky. and if, i frustration to this, you start swearing at her, she just freezes up, kind of shrugs her shoulders. get mad woman, get mad!

in other IKEA news, i checked the website and freaking utah is getting an IKEA. why the heck won't they put one in denver--there are way more yuppies here than salt lake!

don't talk down to me

if you do, don't be surprised if i drop the f-bomb on you.

Aschenmittwoch

it is indeed ash wednesday, which i explained to rachel and matty numbchucks on monday evening as I pondered what i would give up. lutherans don't really have to give up anything, but some of us choose to. but i think it should say somewhere that grad students are exempted. especially when the beginning of lent happens two weeks before finals. i mean, seriously--which of the typical things could i possibly go without without going insane--coffee, alcohol, and other drug like substances. i don't eat chocolate, so that wouldn't really count. so i decided to give up pop, which will be both good for me and something i will really miss. i love pop. i love the carbonation on the back of my throat. i love the sugary goodness. so on the way back from church at noon, i stopped at safeway to get some lunch. and now i am drinking a giant vat of iced tea with artificial sweetener. it's yummy, but i miss the bubbles.
and i've got the cross on my forehead and feel like a little bit of a freak because everyone is staring me, but i don't want to wash it off, because i don't think that's the point.