um.

 1.  Nick and I are still together.  We talked things out, and have been checking in more with ‘the relationship’ in general since the last entry.  I showed him my list, turns out he wants nearly all the same stuff I do, including, apparently, to work towards becoming monogamous.  With me.  
2.  Did I tell you I applied to the Graduate Center’s PhD musicology program?  Well, I did.  AND got accepted.  No financial aid, though, which is a bummer.  But I made a list of my concerns re: enrolling there in the fall, most of them come down to money, and I’m working on getting my shit together.   

3.  Paid off two more credit cards with my tax return money.  The evil debt collectors, the ones who tried to sue me, dropped the suit the day of the traverse hearing when they realized they couldn’t really prove I owed them money.  Still trying to figure out what to do about that, but … it was surprising. and funny.  

4.  Bought a new sewing machine, but have no idea when I’ll get to try it out. 

5.  Nick and all of his faculty mentors are putting the pressure on the BC department chair to put me on the teaching roster this fall.  If I’m teaching at a CUNY school, I won’t have to pay for tuition at GC.

6.  I’m presenting at the Society for American Music conference in Cincinnati a week from today.  I am freaking out a lot more than I thought I would, and have been plagued all day by a pervading feeling of inferiority regarding my academic rank (the other presenter in my session is a PhD candidate, compared to my lowly M.A. candidacy) and my general qualifications on my topic.  

7.  The results of #1 and #6 have sort of caused some sort of fall-out between me and my current academic advisor.  

8.  Who’s quitting Starbucks in < 6 months?  I AM! That knowledge, plus the profitability of my 401K, the market value of my vested stock options, and the possibility of a Q2 bonus are the only things making my job bearable.  I seriously can’t imagine what I would be like right now if I had been rejected…

9. I am giving up dairy for Lent.  That is going to be really hard. 

10. I am suffering through living with the non-Nick housemates.  Two of them are terribly unambitious, but I’ve stopped buying all the groceries and stuff, and Nick has taken over a lot of the cleaning, so I generally am not as upset about it all as I used to be.  Fiscally, the five of us continuing to cohabitate is, unfortunately, the best option, as it makes our individual rent contributions less than $600, which is dirt cheap ’round these parts.  But now that Nick is seeing how little the other two actually do, he is starting to really embrace the idea of splitting up the household at some point in the next few years.