(no subject)

So I said I have a bunch of exciting things to write about!

I heard back about financial aid for school a few days ago. After they processed my special circumstances exception form, they decided that I'm eligible for $4500 in grants! And there are even some loans available to me on top of that. I'm feeling very much better about my prospects for affording schooling while not worrying too much about trying to work at the same time. I've been really excited about going back to school anyway, but feeling like I can fully concentrate on the school work I'm doing makes me even happier. *wags*

Work is coming along on building a room for me at my parents' house. farm_cat has done all the measurements and given me an estimate of costs for materials. We're going to carpet the room and build a wall to dvide it from the rest of the upstairs. I'm pretty content with how it seems to be shaping up. Of course, currently it belong to D. He's moving out at the end of next month, but right now it's full of his very cluttered belongings. I cleared out a corner of the room to start stacking my stuff in, and he's going to start cleaning up in there soon.

The move is coming along as well. Most of my non-furniture possessions are at my parents' house in Kenosha at this point. My bookshelf made it here in the last load too. I still need to disassemble and haul my bed and my desk, but those are the only large items left. I think I'll be done by the end of next week.

It'll be a little weird being in Kenosha without a room of my own for a month, but for the first couple weeks of said month I won't be around much anyway. I'll be attending Gen Con with danaeris, and then going to Minneapolis with my dad. I may end up in the Keweenaw for a little while too, or maybe even drive over to see the Soo Locks. I haven't quite decided yet. I plan to look into accommodations via couch-surfing.org, and if I can't find anything there, I'll just sleep in my car a couple of nights. No biggie.

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I'm feeling more sad about the fact that soon I won't be living in Chicago anymore. My weeks, and possibly weekends, are going to be pretty busy with school stuff I imagine, so it'll be difficult to get down to the city at all regularly. Danae and I will probably end up visiting back and forth most weekends, but the weekday nights and mornings I've been spending with with lisagems will not be nearly so feasible. I've known that was coming for a while and there really isn't a way to change it. It's a sort of miniature version of what I suppose may eventually happen with Danae, as she looks at doctoral programs around the country to begin in the future. Chicago isn't so far from Kenosha that Lisa and I can't arrange visits here and there. Of course, I'm looking at transferring somewhere to in a year, maybe to Madison, which would introduce more distance for both people I've been seeing.

These things make me a bit sad, but I've been prioritizing doing something about an education since even before I split up with Moira, and especially since moving to Chicago and being laid off. I'm going to pursue the education and career I've come to feel passionately about, and I need to invest the time and energy into it to excel. There's a little irony in that. I used to be so shy about people, and felt isolated regularaly. Now I love talking to and being with people I've connected with locally and semi-locally, but I have to move away for an education that will put me into a career that will involve putting that love of talking to people to use.

Well, my sweet and wonderful cabbit and I will be driving off to the Racine Habitat for Humanity ReStore soon, so I'll sign off. I hope you all are staying cool in this heat wave here in the US!

(no subject)

I got to go on a tour of Fermilab this past week with Danae and a co-worker of hers who was visiting from overseas. It was so fantastic!

Now, I've been tickled just to be on the grounds in the last few months, attending the Monday night board game event. And a few weeks back, Danae took me around the grounds and I saw some of the interesting architecture that's off the main route, as well as the pioneer cemetery on the grounds that dates from the 1850s.

But earlier this week, I got to go on a tour of Wilson Hall as well as the LinAc (linear accelerator) building with a tour guide who talked about what was going on at the site, and it was a fantastic experience for a lot of reasons.

I idolized science and scientists when I was growing up. I wanted to be a scientist in the hard fields. While it seems that that won't happen (though maybe I'll get to be a social scientist, which would be really neat), I still have such respect for the people who work at places like Fermilab and for the work that's done there. So on Monday when I got to walk around and photograph Wilson Hall, it was a really neat thing for me.

And then on Monday, when I got to go on a tour of the building and see a mock-up of the Tevatron accelerator tunnel and then walk through the building where the control stations for the accelerators are and even see the actual LinAc, it was just thrilling. It made me so very happy to to be in this special place where people are working together to make the world a better one to live in. I can't imagine seeing this place firsthand and still voting to end funding for the Tevatron and high energy particle experimentation. The thought of the Tevatron being permanently shut down, even if the LHC does kind of make it obsolete (though not, as I understand it, in the area of proton-antiproton collision), makes me sad. It feel a little bit like the ending of the shuttle program in the sense of it being the ending of something that, for me, has sort of alwasy been around, and has always been a symbol to me of some kind of idealism.