tenyear american tenure

I have lived in the US for ten years and ten days.
Weird. About half of that time I've been in university, which is an even stranger thought. Last week I had to go sign up for all my commencement stuff at the bookstore; I am now the proud owner of a lavender tassel and two hand-me-down grad gowns (one in the height bracket above me and one in the bracket below. Is it worth it to try to trade off for one in my size?) and the cap.
Two more months!

--

I had a hectic week last week --busybusybusy Monday through Wednesday (including a job interview) and then a field trip! Fifteen of the girls in my graduating interiors studio trouped up to Seattle and then Vancouver for the weekend.
I love the Seattle Public Library --it has the kind of interiors I like. Go Rem Koolhaus! I (of course) forgot my camera, but some of the other girls have photos that I might be able to post here. We saw lots of other cool things (St. Ignatius Chapel and Pike Street Market). I forgot just how nice it is to be in a city-with-a-captial-C that has lots of good design around. It really does help! Vancouver was even better. As the token Canadian I got to explain the "funny money," more specifically, loonies and toonies. We walked through the city a lot, had dim sum in Chinatown, saw some of the sights and went shopping. I went to beautiful furniture showrooms and fell in love with some designer furniture all over again. Ack. It's a curse being a design student -admiring all these beautiful things that you will never be able to afford. But it was nice to see them anyways. Some do fall short when you see them in the flesh. But some are even more gorgeous! And the worst part: if you just want to buy a book with their pretty pictures in them, those don't come cheaply either.


Just one photo --at the Steven Holl chapel in Seattle.

signed, sealed, delivered . . . i'm yours

I put my babies in the mail today.
Till that moment, they're pristine. They haven't been passed over, rejected yet. Now they're gone off into the world! Little fledgling resumes. *sigh.

Exciting to see what they will become though!

here's looking "hatchoo!" kid

So this one is from my mom . . . She laughed at me after it happened and insisted I share it with you. (Justine, she may even have said "bloggable!")

Yesterday we enjoyed some really good sermons. The evening service was about Ruth --well, really, not about Ruth so much. You know how it is, when you hear a good sermon in a reformed church, and even though when you look at the bulletin it can look like you're going to be hearing a character study or a moral lesson and, really, it's all about the One who makes each character. And how He brings them into the story of redemption. Anyways, the minister was making all these really good points. And just when he came to the climax of his sermon, working up to his big application question, I felt the sudden horrible inevitableness that is a coming sneeze.
I tried to supress it.
It was playing with me. You know when sneezes pretend they're going to throw a big fuss, and then disappear, only to catch you completely unaware a few seconds later when you thought all the moment of danger had passed? That's what this one did.
So right after the minister paused to give us a moment to absorb what he'd been telling us, my sneeze took that moment to completely take over and just "HaaaaaTCHOOOOOO!" I don't sneeze delicately on the best of occasions (--in fact, if I'm standing or walking when I'm sneezing, you may witness a hop, kick or a jump).
I kept my head down and rummaged through my purse for kleenex while trying not to smile too broadly at the humor of the situation.

--

The Term to End All Terms is here!
Spring Break was much too short, but I crammed in some cover-letter writing and portfolio-perfecting, a trip to the coast, as well as a tiny jaunt to Seattle (where I visited UW's campus. Beautiful enough for me to consider going to grad school there. But only for about 2 minutes.) Ten weeks left of frenetic designing, job searching, and homework.


"everything that is done in the world is done by hope" -martin luther