8.08.2013

Itinerantly Wandering the Midwest

This has been a very... MUCH summer. It's not even over yet, and it already holds several [Ellen] World Records. For instance, this summer I have:

-Been to and slept in six states: Iowa, Alaska, Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
-Slept in 17 beds
-Lived out of a suitcase for 71 days
-Driven many, many miles, more than I care to count.
-Visited two new states, Alaska and Washington
-Driven in big-city traffic (I had to let go of a lot of anger)

Not in the realm of records:
-I flew for the first time completely alone and unassisted
-Stayed in a hotel on a spur-of-the-moment whim of flight authorities
-Did many and varied things completely out of my comfort zone
-Moved my life around three separate times
-Moved to a state and moved out again within three weeks
-Made dozens of new friends
-Went to ALA for the first, and I can't imagine the last time
-Read lots of new books
-Got three new library cards
-Graduated college
-Got tonsillitis
-Ate tapas
-Took a plane, train, and automobile, in that order, in one day

But yes, it's been a muchly much summer. For those of you keeping score at home (and by home I mean Facebook), you've been privy to the exciting adventure of me Moving For Good, and then saying Oh No Wait I Am Going Somewhere Else Haha Faked You Out (how do people type that way all the time, capitalizing every word? It's exhausting).

What happened was I moved to Madison, because Madison is where I'm going to library school. I hadn't deferred yet, because I was kind of anticipating digging up a mass of gold or finding a sizeable chunk of ambergris or something like that, but unfortunately that didn't happen and I decided to defer school for a year. Not a big deal, this way I can get in-state tuition and save money and possibly get other awesome funding (preferably in the form of an on-campus job like a TA or something). In the meantime, I decided to look for a job and an apartment in Madison, so I could stay for the year. Unfortunately, nothing at all was panning out: no jobs responded to me (except for the movie theatre, where the interview generated a good story and worse impression, remind me to tell you when we have coffee next), none of the apartments I saw were terribly habitable or in my price range, and it was proving to be a daunting task to get to know people when I A. knew no one else and B. don't do anything that people generally do in club or group form.

So! I remembered that Minnesota has a reciprocal tuition agreement with Wisconsin, where if you are a resident of one you get practically in-state tuition in the other. After a lot of thought and a lot of people telling me I was not, in fact, a crazed lunatic for proposing the idea, I decided to move to the Twin Cities for the year. Papa was gracious enough to send out some networking emails (a new concept to me. My net experience with networking is meeting people and saying "Oh my gosh, you like that thing too? Let's be friends, here's my twitter account") and in about two days I had a place to live lined up an a job interview. That was on a Wednesday, and the interview was on Tuesday, so I decided to move on the next Monday. And  then I did. That night I got a call about interviewing at Barnes and Noble as well. Needless to say, it was a bit of a whirlwind. But here I am, both interviews went well, I found a very nice bakery, and my bike gets to live indoors. Everybody lives, Rose, just this once.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm still going to grad school in Madison, just next year)

Picture time!:

Being impatient in the Seattle airport after my stuffy ears and my aviation inexperience caused me to miss my connecting flight. Spoiler, everything turned out okay.


Later that same day, but in Alaska with food in my stomach. Amanda took me to the Mendenhall Glacier and we probably almost saw a bear on the trail.

I spent an wonderful and absurd amount of time in Chicago, except it was all split up and never all at once. This is by Lake Michigan when it was all foggy and lovely out.


During one of the trips I went to the ALA conference. They had different musical acts just wandering around the convention center on each day. The first day was a mini-marching band. To see a super coincidental video of me taking this picture, click here.


I turned 22, along with my Grandma. I love sharing my birthday with one of the coolest women in my life! We had a great time and went shopping and out to lunch and everything.


Another one of my adventures was farm-sitting for a professor for three days. They have  eating chickens and egg chickens and eating ducks and baby ducks and egg ducks and cats and a dog, not to mention their expansive garden and strawberry patch. Needless to say, I was in heaven:). This is the take for the day, egg-wise. Two of the eggs are blue, and the big white one in the corner is a duck egg. I pretty much existed off of eggs, toast, peas, and strawberries for the week. Absolutely zero regrets.



We had Cousins Camp at the beginning of July, and as you can see in the picture we carried on the tradition of Diet Coke and Mentos. There were 11 of us this year, and it was completely wonderful from start to finish! A little lower-key than previous Cousins Camps, but we all enjoyed hanging around the farm a little more, turning gallons and gallons of water into balloons, eating lots of ice cream, and flying our kites.

Soon after that I moved to Madison, and now here I am in Minneapolis. Like I keep telling Papa, I'm sure I'll be off to Namibia any day now.

In all seriousness, I actually feel really peaceful about being here. When I got to Madison I cried practically every day, which I assumed to be me just doing my thing and figuring out the whole Living On My Own thing and moving and whatever, so I wasn't too concerned. But starting on the day that I decided to come to the Cities, I haven't cried once, and I've simply felt good and reasonable about the entire enterprise. Probably a good sign.

Now: I need to save up money to go see A Prairie Home Companion and tick that off my list.



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