House-sitting and Such

This has been a crazy week.

I'm house-sitting for some friends across town for 2 1/2 weeks--watching their dogs, staying in their house, eating their food, and getting well-paid for it. But it's a 15-20 minute drive to the north side of town, and I'm so freakin' isolated! I'm lonely and bored enough to go to bed, and it's only 9:45.

The dogs are pretty cool though. Their names are Mobius, a yellow lab, and Bernouli, a greyhound (I'm certain I spelled them both wrong--they're named after famous mathmeticians). They like to sleep in the bed with me and they bark ferociously enough that I feel safer being in this big house alone. The neighborhood isn't exactly pristine, though it's not as bad as Angela's, who has a repeat felon living next door.

It's nice to have a car (they're letting me drive theirs!) and a real kitchen and internet and TV for a few weeks though. But I think I'd give it all up to be back in my cute little apartment with no TV, full-sized kitchen, or internet, but with everything I need in walking distance, friends included. Driving sucks. Traffic is ridiculous; everyone should stop driving and walk and bike places. The world would be a much better place. I'll be glad when I'm back to that. But they've been really generous, both with money and letting me use everything they own, so it's worth it.

I'm buying a new bike next week. One of my old TLC bosses, Kyle, fixes up bikes on the side and has a great old junker/cruiser bike for me for twenty bucks. I've been looking for something that I can run around on that I won't worry about getting scratched or stolen. I'll still lock this one up, but I won't worry so much about it as I do about Izzie, my nice roadie.

I had my first day of business meetings yesterday. My boss in Advancement, Nicole, the annual giving director, and her boss, LuAnn, the VP for Advancement, and I (my title is annual giving intern/assistant annual giving director) met with our rep from IDC, the consulting company that works with us for phoneathon. We had our final design session before we start putting everything in motion for the fall. It's pretty intense. I felt really business-like and adult--wearing dress clothes and heels to work, going out with my bosses for a business lunch, meeting all day in the swanky Ortner Center conference rooms where they bring us water and plastic-wrapped cups. It was surreal. And long. I really do enjoy development, and PR too, but the office job thing... I don't know. It might take a pretty special organization to keep me sitting at a desk for long.

I haven't once felt lonely or nervous all alone in my apartment, but being all by myself in this house gives me the creeps, even with the dogs.

Tomorrow I might go to Sabbath School, if people are going. If not, we're having a potluck after church. I made dark chocolate peanut butter brownies. I think I'm going to bring my angelfood cake (from FoodNet) with some sort of berry sauce too.

That's the news. Peace.