HEEEEELP MEEEEE

Here I am, back in office-land. The whirlwind is over, and things are finally beginning to settle down. I have to admit, it can be kind of nice to pretend to be a mundane, "regular" person who gets on the train and grabs their coffee and goes to their office to sit at their desk (and do what? -- of that I'm not entirely certain. During my three years of temping, I've been desperately trying to figure out what people do all day. I'm not really any closer to figuring it out than I was three years ago.). The office I'm in now is a tiny one that has something to do with stocks and finance and trading. It's just me and two dudes who are mostly traveling, so...most of the time I guess it's just going to be me. Good thing I like being by myself, quietly reading and passing the time. The unfortunate thing is that their computer system has blocked all web-based mail, facebook, myspace -- all the best time wasting sites. But they haven't blocked blogger yet!!!! It's probably only a matter of time...
Let me back up a bit to the weekend. Unfortunately, I don't have any of my pictures with me, so I will have to do picture posting later, but I will begin with graduation. It was a grand time with Grandma, Dad, Mom, and Nick all in attendance. We ate at some delicious restaurants, and the acutal graduation itself was pretty enjoyable and not too boring. I'll have a pic of Julia Louis-Dreyfus to post; I took about twenty pictures of her since I was in the second row (one of my colleagues observed that they probably let the music grads sit in the front to take pity on us for most likely not having a job lined up).
Then it was on to Syracuse, NY for the wedding of my friend Angela. We had to get up at 3:30 am to catch our 5:30 am flight, but all flights were on time and we made it to the hotel by 11:00 am, and the wedding ceremony at 1:00 pm, which was certainly a miracle. The ceremony was beautiful (if not a bit long -- those Catholics do go on forever -- my sister's Methodist wedding took twenty minutes!) and the reception was wonderfully extravagant, with a four course meal and plenty of drinking and dancing. The reception took place at Turning Stome Resort, and we had a pretty swanky room on the twelth floor of the hotel, so afterward we gambled for a bit before stumbling back to our room to crash for the night. Our flight home wasn't until Monday morning, so we spent Sunday exploring upstate NY a bit -- we went to see a 167' waterfall at a National Park and attempted to explore downtown Syracuse, which we found was pretty much shut down on Sundays. We had a nice dinner at a local place and then crashed at a Hampton Inn near the airport.
Monday was a bit of a strain -- our flight from Syrause to our connection in Pittsburgh was on time, but on our flight from Pitts to Chicago, the captain informed us that we were not able to land at O'Hare due to inclement weather, so they circled over Indiana for awhile before deciding to fly us back to Pittsburgh. Gah. To make a long story short (too late for that I guess), they informed us we would not be able to get a flight back to Chicago until 5:45 pm Tuesday, which was a problem since we both had to work Tuesday, so we found a flight to Indianapolis, rented a car, and drove back to Chi from Indy, getting us in at about 1:30 am. Not fun, not fun at all. Alas, that's travel for ya, especially domestic travel.
The week hasn't slowed down much, and this weekend we begin the moving process, so it looks like I'm going going going for the rest of this month. We pick up our keys tonight, and then we are going to start painting this weekend and hopefully move in as much stuff as possible throughout the week. Saturday is my 25th birthday (hooray!), and Nick is taking me to dinner and then we're having a little "drinks thing" with a few friends. Nothing too out of control, as I am an old woman now.
Pictures to follow when I get a chance! Happy Thursday!