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pmcatnip
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Name: Trisha
Gender: Female
Interests: GOD, reading, DRAWING, fishing, music (rock, hip hop, and punk mostly), movies, hanging out with friends when I really should be doing homework, planning pranks, photography, instant messaging, MINESWEEPER, spider solitaire
Occupation: Student
Website: visit my website
AIM:  pmcatnip
MSN: pmcatnip@hotmail.com
Member Since:
12/3/2004
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| Today's been a busy day in my kitchen! All summer I was out on an internship and only had a microwave to cook with. It's so good to be back in a real kitchen that I'm on bit of a cooking frenzy.
First, I baked a cornish game hen in teriyaki sauce for lunch.
While that was in the oven, my fiance and I tried to recreate the secret sauce from Cafe Yumm. They have the most fantastic tangy sauce. I bought a bottle of it the other day. We estimated quantities off the ingredient list (it's mostly oil, garbanzo beans, almonds, lemon juice, yeast and garlic) and tried to taste out the herbs. We used hummus and almond butter to make it easier on the blender. The flavor came out pretty close, and we're pleased with it. :)
Then I boiled the game hen carcass and made rice with the broth. I put in the leftover teriyaki/grease from the baking pan, carrots, and grilled onion. It's yummy.
I started some pork in a marinade for tomorrow. And finally, I'm going to make a batch of divinity.
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| Sometimes I feel bad for never updating this anymore. And then I remember that only a couple people even saw the last few posts. So my dear reader...shall I post again?
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| Looking back, my first bout at university was remarkably bland. I didn't much crazy or fun stuff to tell stories about. I pulled pranks on my friends and I got a crazy summer job, but that's about it. It dawned on me one day that I'm jealous of Joshua for taking that stained glass workshop, Nick for getting into polo, and Hans for being on the Mini Baja team.
So this time around I'm cramming as much exciting stuff as I can. Here we have it:
[X] Keep doing ballroom dancing.
[ ] Audition for (and hopefully get into) the Cool Shoes dance performance troop. (This happens in the spring.)
[X] Get involved in some sort of club. Really involved, not just going. (I just got a PR officer position with the ballroom club, and next year I plan to do one of the engineering design clubs.)
[ ] Take a class at the craft center.
[X] Take more fun PAC classes. (I took ballroom 1 as a lead, that was fun, and swimming. Definitely will continue the fun classes.)
[X] Tutor and/or TA again. (Did that this term, and want to continue.)
[X] Conversation partner with foreign exchange students.
[ ] Host a party with lots of good friends, movie night etc and hopefully DJ my own personal dance.
[X] Live in a house instead of apartment.
[X] Do a little gardening. Vegetables, etc. More than just houseplants.
[ ] Move in with someone I'm already friends with. (I like my roommates, but just once I'd like to move in with a friend. I'm getting tired of this "Hi I'm so-and-so" spiel every time I move.)
And/Or
[ ] Get a studio and not have to deal with roommate drama anymore. (But I'd rather live with a friend. I don't like living alone.)
[ ] Finish that ginormous blanket I've been crocheting half my life. (The goal is to have it done by graduation next year.)
[ ] Learn more off-the-road stuff about Corvallis. Go hiking. Go letterboxing. Swim in the rivers. Etc.
[ ] Use more of the resources I get as a student. Like discounts, printing allotment in the computer labs, or health services (should I ever need it that is).
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| Merry day after Christmas, everybody!
I'm not going to apologize for the blogless months anymore, because honestly I just don't keep up on here as well as I used to and that's okay. I've been busy and it looks like most of my readers are busy too.
So, what's been going on since August in a nutshell:
August: Laid off from Hynix, move to Corvallis
September: Settle on a major (civil engineering), get re-enrolled at OSU, get yanked around by the employment department not wanting to pay me my unemployment and making me go to lots of dumb workshops. Get the unemployment situation corrected, and then find out that I won't get any money during fall term due to a crack in the system that I fall into. Start classes. (Good thing I had savings!) Major happiness to live in the same city as Jeff after a year of long distance.
October: Emotional upset as I take a weekend to figure out what I really want relationship-wise. Got things sorted out and it's much much better now. Lots of stress as I tackle midterm exams and paperwork for Trade Act tuition money.
November: Continuing stress tackling midterms and doing government paperwork. Happy Thanksgiving!
December: Finals and break. Woohoo! Did well in my classes, not as well as I could have done but better than I expected after all that time out of engineering. Sign the final paperwork and FINALLY be approved for tuition money. Yay! Play a lot of video games on my roommate's Super Nintendo to help relax. Run around visiting friends and family and catch up on sleep.
Spread out through all that I lost 25-ish pounds and have three fun roommates.
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| So much has changed since my last blog. I did another term of classes at Lane Community College, but cut it back to half-time instead of full-time, because the summer classes were in the afternoon when I normally slept. I still worked graveyard at Hynix, and ran around visiting people (mostly Jeff) on my days off. As a result most of my sleep was in 3 or 4 hour increments, hardly healthy (!) and I felt the results physically. This is proof that good sleep is critical. I just didn't feel good most of the time; I started to get random-yet-persistent pains like my hip and ankle; sometimes I would even feel shaky (like when you drink too much caffeine). My mood could change instantly and I often felt on the verge of tears over nothing. Even though I trained my mind to stay active, my body rebelled and would not go any faster than it had to. It was saying, "Enough, you need to stop!"
The sleep situation is fixed now, thanks to two very important events. 1 - Summer classes are over. 2 - The rumors at work were true. Hynix in Eugene shut down. I was laid off on August 11.
So now I have lots of free time and don't know what to do with myself. I've fallen into a sleep pattern that I've never had before. I've always been more of a night person, okay, like I've never ever ever been a morning person. Well now I'm having to retrain my body to do this thing called "sleep" when I start getting tired. I don't have to stay up for 35 hours anymore. So I go to bed between 9:30 and midnight (often falling asleep talking to Jeff on the phone) and wake up around 8 feeling fully rested and refreshed. It's so weird. But kinda cool too. It's like, whoa, I can actually do stuff before noon?! I don't know if this will be a long-lasting effect, but I'm glad to at least get steady sleep again.
I've done my paperwork for unemployment and should start getting checks very soon. Hynix employees also qualify for this wonderful thing called Trade Adjustment Assistance (more commonly known as the Trade Act) which will...get this...give us money for college!!! The idea behind the Trade Act is that our jobs have been lost to outsourcing (which they have--Hynix is building new fabs in China and closed ours here), therefore we can retrain for a career in a new industry. We just found out a few days ago about being TA approved, so I'm still sorting out what to do. Of course there's a lot of paperwork and hoops to jump through. I need to apply before I can celebrate a return to university. But just the fact that I'm eligible to apply is something I'm happy about. Oh and another thing about Trade Act is that we would keep getting unemployment checks while we're in school, up to two years. Get paid to go to school? Heck yeah!
I've gotten Mom's, Dad's, and Jeff's opinions on this, and here's what I'm probably going to do: return to OSU and get an engineering degree. Finish what I started. It's not my life's dream (I don't have one), and it's going to be really hard. But nothing else is very appealing and this may be the only opportunity I ever get to go back and finish debt free. It will show future employers that I finish the things I start and that I know how to learn. I don't know if I should continue with mechanical e. or another one, maybe industrial/manufacturing. They're similar enough to change with no problems. I just don't know yet. Thinking of the huge amount of work it'll be, not only to take the classes but to relearn the math and physics that I've forgotten......oy.
Oh, and I'm moving to Corvallis in two days! I'm moving into a house with three other Christian girls (squee!!!  ) on the southern edge of town. It's going to be great. I know God had a hand in that. Well, all of this probably, but specifically that. It's a 4 bed, 2 1/2 bath with a yard (that the maintenance guy mows for us), a little garden plot, washer/dryer, garage, big open kitchen, in a safe neighborhood, for a good price. The only thing is it's farther away from campus than I had wanted. But that's okay because everything else is just perfect. The way all of this has worked out seems to me to confirm that it's okay to go now.
Finishing MC, I had no direction other than a strong sense to stay at Crossfire. No reason why, or how long, just a strong sense to stick around. So I got a place and a job in the area to start paying off my loans, because a good steward is not a steward in debt. That was two years ago. I didn't stay as involved with the church as I meant to be and I definitely have had my share of failures. My debts are almost gone though. Then a year ago God put Jeff in my life. For a while the long-distance thing was okay but not anymore. So the planned 2009 move got moved up. I wasn't really sure if God was releasing me from Crossfire or what, but I didn't hear a "no" and I figure God gave us this relationship so we should do what makes sense to take care of it. I looked around at rooms for rent and none of them were really a good fit, so I posted an ad on Craigslist. I didn't think anyone would respond because I said I'm Christian and want roommates with similar lifestyles. Lo and behold, Rachel got ahold of me and she's just great, the house is great, I haven't met the other two girls yet but she says they're great too. Meanwhile the situation at work was getting worse and the plant finally shut down, and now we are eligible for all these great benefits like school. And now I wonder...is that why God had me stick around?
I don't believe the timing of all this happening at once is coincidental. I certainly don't deserve for God to have arranged it all, the selfish undisciplined follower that I am. I can't see Him shutting down the plant and affecting the lives of 1400 workers just for me, so there's got to be something going on bigger than me.
So yeah. That's my life. It gets really stressful working with the government, but other than that things are great.
Here are some LOLcats I made the other day.
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