Author: Esmimesmi

When you have a mostly useless degree, no real job prospects, and no desire to go into debt to get a Ph.D. what do you do? Leave the country, of course. Especially since Korea is always eager to have native English speakers come and teach English in their prep-schools, and there’s the added bonus that they pay well enough for me to live and pay off some loans! (And hey, traveling the world is awesome. You should all do more of it.)

So I went through the whole process, got a visa, got a contract with a Korean school, got some shots and a check up, packed my stuff. I spent that final summer after my graduation at home, ticking days off my calendar, freaked out and incredibly excited that I was going to go thousands of miles from home *for a job*, while everyone I knew back home alternated between approval, shock, and making stupid jokes about living with ‘most glorious leader.’ (Seriously, if someone jokes about me going to North Korea I will cut you so hard. There are two Koreas! One of them likes us. Learn some damn history!)

Then it happened. It was finally here. Read more »

It was cold and a little rainy outside and I was thankful the walk from my apartment to the community gym wasn’t too far. At six in the morning it was a struggle to get dressed and drag myself down here, but the the gym was empty, quiet, and unused and that was worth the early wake-up for me. Thankfully they kept the gym at a sane temperature year round, it was tempting to turn it up higher than the 74 it was at but I knew once I got going I’d be grateful that I hadn’t turned it up higher. I hung my coat on one of the hooks and took off my gloves, did a couple of stretches, popped in my earbuds so I could listen to an e-book, and got on the stationary bike and started pedaling. Read more »

So, I was freaking out. Here it was a day after my boss had gone down in me in the break room after we closed up and I was about to head back in and see her. Not just *her*, though, but I was going to be around her and all my other co-workers. I had no idea what to expect, would she smile at me, would she ignore me, had she told anyone, was I going to get in trouble, was she going to get in trouble–

Stop. Just stop. As freaked out as I was there wasn’t any point standing in my room freaking out about it. Either go and face it or never go again. Which wasn’t even really a choice, I liked the job, I liked having money, and, who am I kidding, I was hoping whatever it was that happened with my boss wasn’t a one off thing. Read more »

Hello everyone! Two posts in two nights?! Madness. I hadn’t planned on posting anything else this weekend, but, well, something happened to me today that I figured you all might appreciate.

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PAX South 2016! (For anyone who doesn’t know: geek convention, video games, etc.) Due to some weird work circumstances we didn’t get to leave until the day of, on Friday, at three and the morning. And who was the asshole who got stuck driving? Yup. Me. A four hour trip isn’t incredibly long, but when it’s at three am and you got off work at 1030 the previous night, well, I was pretty drained for most of PAX day one.

My friends decided they wanted to watch round one of the Omegathon, and I wasn’t especially interested in seeing it so I decided to head back to the house we rented out and relax for a while, maybe catch a nap. On the way back I updated my Tinder profile, kind of on a whim, just to see if anything interesting popped up while I was here. Read more »

It wasn’t just that Josh was a cute, beautiful, sexy man. That helped, sure, but a huge part of what I loved about him was that we shared so many interests, and that he cared about doing more than just the minimum to get through life. He was in band with me (trombones, hell yeah!), played football, and was our set designer/builder for drama. It honestly amazed me all the things he did and spent time on while managing to keep pretty good grades, it amazed me even more that he had any time at all for friends and time for me. Of course, taking a full classload and doing so many electives and after school activities meant we didn’t have a ton of time together, so we had to get creative in finding time to be, ahem, alone.

I’ve mentioned it before, but where I grew up there were a lot of rich people. Combine that with a fairly small community with a single high-school and it’s no small wonder that our school was incredibly well done. To my eyes (that cared oh so little for sports) the crowning jewel was our auditorium- 1,000 seats with balcony, full tech booth, mechanically controlled acoustic walls to adjust for plays or orchestras, it was a stunning amount of money that surely was spent on such a majestic and wonderful space. But the best part of the whole thing was backstage. Read more »