Current location:	work
Current mood:	sick, another cold, blah!
Current music:	girlyman
Entry tags:	d, new relationships, school

a new year, a new semester, a new...
so, the spring semester is officially in full swing. labs are meeting this week and i am ALREADY overwhelmed by the copious amounts of work already on the docket. so much for a less stressful return to school. *sigh*

this semester consists of three classes:
GEOG 360 quantitative methods in geographical analysis
GEOG 578 GIS applications
URPL 969 applied GIS workshop: land use inventory and analysis

the first one can really just be refered to as....stats...ugh! i HATE stats...can i emphasize that again...HATE! but, the good news (yes i can say there is good news even in reference towards evil stats...me the constant positive thinker that i am) is that THIS time the professor is not crazy...this is a good place to start! AND even better, she is organized and "on-top-of-things"...which is exactly how i like my stats professors to be...not all flighty and forgetting things like course schedules and what not...which was last semester and why i dropped it last semester. so, stats, take 2, is seeming to be better, i might actually learn something this time! whoa!

GEOG 578 has potential for being cool and also potential for sucking majorly. its not been good thus far due to the lack of a professor (his father died, he's in china and will be back next week, poor guy) and a very sweet chinese TA who does not speak english well...its been a rocky start. HOWEVER, this is a class based on group projects geared towards solving problems in the "real world" via GIS...in other words, hand's on applications of this stuff...the super cool thing is that the prof pretty much said last sememster he wanted my internship...the CWD/soils comparision thing (that will hopefully end up as a published article) to be one of the projects...so i get to play project manager AND get help on my internship! rock on!! i presented it today and i think i am going to have to turn people away from my group...we can only have about 5 per group and i already have like 3 people that want to work on it! yay! i NEVER have the cool idea/project!! this is exciting!

urban planning....this is an intmidating class for me. i have no background in urban planning. but the class seems like a really cool opportunity for more of that oh so very important hands-on experience...the class is looking to use GIS applications to assess the impacts of coastal development along the milwaukee shoreline. we are going to go down there and do a survey and then present the restults to milwaukee goverment officals. in addition to this we are going to be looking at other aspects of using GIS in relationshion to coastal management issues. so all in all it will be a a very good experience i think, if not a wee bit intimidating.

on top of all of this i am working (or trying to at least) 20 hrs/week at the primate center library on the most ridiculous project EVER! i can't believe this got grant money! but hey, i get paid because of it, so i am not going to really knock it, something about beggers and being choosey...so, basically the primate center and UW library system has digitized like 3000 pictures of....well...primates...and they want them to be accessible and searchable for the public. so a database needs to be created in order to search for said monkey pictures....this is my job...fill in key words and terms for searching. this will also be done for a collection of, ahem, monkey art...paintings of primates...audubon-style. again, needs to be searchable, and i get to make it so...yea!

so busy, busy 15 weeks ahead of me!!

so, that is school...in other news...my personal life has been, well, in a word, crazy...active to say the least and downright confusing more often than not. i am happy to say that, yes, while most of you know that i have indeed met someone new, let me just state it here for the record of things, i really am very excited about this...its been a long time since i haven't felt crazy in my interactions with some girl or had giant red flags (coupled with the nausiating feeling of "oh dear the committee will not approve"). its been good to reflect on past relationships and see those red flags for what they are, to be able to recognize them, as i am tired of running into them blindly and paying the consequences later with heart ache over finding myself wiht a person for whom i am just not a good match with. for once i am excited but not feeling crazy, out of control and i am excited to just let this play out and not force anything. yeah, i know, talking everyday might seem like rushing it, but its been a fabulously easy dialogue, rich and warm and really just fun. i spent so long with people who didnt seem to know how to just talk with me...uncomfortable silences grew in between the fights. its nice to just laugh again.