ducks

in a row.

when i was growing up, my mom used to say this most always prefaced with, "she/he never has her..." it was annoying, yes. but now that the time for change has come upon me, i've found myself saying this both out loud and to myself a lot lately.

briefly:

- my organization is growing and needs to get their fiscal year closed out. strategic planning meeting for development and programs in a week. i am still slightly surprised that i even use the term fiscal year regularly. slowly i'm moving towards someone that likes dealing with money that isn't mine. my personal finances? they're filed in a victoria's secret shopping bag.

- i have a place to live next year that isn't in my terrible studio apartment. put down the money and we'll move in late july, early august. it's a house. with a microwave and washer and dryer. it might just be heaven. i still have to fully plan getting my crap from south carolina, but i can't wait to sleep on a real mattress. unfortunately, that punch line won't get used anymore. a small price to pay.

- school starts in a couple of months. still working on the gross money-stuff associated with it. i should prepare now to not see my friends for the next two years. but i'll be smart when i get out of there, dammit. i will.

- i'm pondering tutoring Adult Basic Ed again. i won't have a lot of time with the commuting time and school, but i think i might. i miss teaching.

but as i think about putting all these life ducks in a row, i'm reminded that so much of life is continually out of order. people are sick. friends fall away. you are misunderstood. shit gets lost. afternoons have no agenda. stuff breaks. but i have no answers, and i'm not ever going to. there's solace in that, i suppose.

9 days

is it luck, or was it really time for me to leave my old job? i think a little bit of both.
nevertheless, 9 days after i got "let go" from ASTT, i got a new job. i'm now the operations manager of One World Education, an education/literacy organization working in both public and charter schools in D.C. if you haven't completely tuned out to my many "dream" musings, one of them was to work with a literacy organization in some fashion. and here we go -- it took a kind of roundabout way, but here i am.
check out their website at www.oneworldeducation.org. but if you don't have time the reader's digest version is this:
Students in both middle school and high school write reflections about any social issue they want and submit it to the volunteer corps of teachers and content specialists at One World Education. the issues range from globalization through a student's trip to Bhutan to AIDS in D.C. to bullying to growing up in Ghana to....
one student's reflection is chosen a month by the program team and the former teachers/PhDs/curriculum creators create a unit plan and curriculum about this issue for use in a classroom, with all the standards and such included too -- with the "ambassadors" reflection as the primary source text. really freakin cool, right?
right.
right now One World Education is working in 25 schools and has been going for 2 years. now they're building up the administration and infrastructure to get bigger and to reach more students. i'm so jazzed to be a part of this organization -- the idea is really cool and i think there's a lot of potential for growth. and the little writer inside of me smiles.
i'll be officially starting June 7.
i'm still not sure how this happens. but i'm always happy when it does.

p.s. - coming to visit the PNW in a few days -- ready for a weakley family wedding, catching up with old friends (anyone remember mike hinman, anyone?...yeah...), and heading up to camp to hopefully reassure the new camp counselors they, in fact, won't kill their campers. in the words of my mom, "i get tired just thinking about it."

see...

...what's great about getting fired is, nothing.
nope, nothing really.

-- you walk into the room and immediately know. it's like something has died. (oh wait, it's your financial stability). and then, the person who's firing you just says blahblahblahRESIGNATIONblahblahblahJUSTKEEPITFORYOURRECORDSblahblahblahQUALITYOFPERFORMANCEblahblahblahEFFECTIVEIMMEDIATELY.

-- and then this chill comes over you. it's as if someone has decided to shake your hand with an electric fence. and leave you there like the fish out of water flopping around in that mid-90s alt-rock video (the artist escapes me).
and then, all i wanted to do was throw my chair through the window. unfortunately, it was wicker so it probably would've just bounced off the window. unfortunate.

i didn't cry, i just looked down and said, "ok then." then i bolted. then i called mom and cried.

mistakes were made on my part (we'll call them 'personality clashes') and i wish them the best. (that's the politically correct thing to say, right?)

at least they waited until two days AFTER my birthday to fire me. so that's something.

p.s. no need for a pity party. just another job.

yeah, Minnesota

so, i thought that being Lutheran i would've gotten my behind to minnesota far earlier than this. i seem to have failed in that regard.
instead, i was drafted to go to a fundraising training conference for torture treatment programs, talking about sustainability in the sector, yada yada. it was good - there were a few sessions that were extremely helpful, especially the one about federal grants and how to position ourselves in the current discussion of "bending the curve" of healthcare costs that are currently driving the healthcare debate/reason behind support for the legislation and how we need to move toward a more piecemeal approach to fundraising for our issue instead of assuming that we will get all of our funding from ORRandthefactthatwecannotcontinuetostaywiththestatusquoifwewanttoreceivefederalfundinginthe futurewemustmoveforwardwithpartnersinsteadofremainingisolatedinourcentersifwearetogaintruesustainability. AAAAAANNNNND, YOU ARE NOW ASLEEP.
back? ok.
anywho, there was one fundraiser who raises $6+ million dollars a year from private foundations alone. she is a ROCKSTAR. she is even more of a rockstar because of the fact that foundation giving in the last two fiscal years has been in an insanely sharp decline - they're dropping faster than allies in Operation Iraqi Freedom circa 2003.
in the most frank and optimistic protrayal of our chances at private foundation funding in the future she gave us this gem,
"rich people are dying every day -- and you can get their money."
i haven't been this inspired in a long time.

a different kind of scary

there are times when i question why i moved to baltimore. those are few and far between. unless i'm at the DMV -- in which case i incessantly question why i moved to maryland.
if i've talked to you on the phone recently, of you've been keeping score on facebook, i've been to the Maryland DMV (they call it the MVA here) more times in the last three months than i ever want to in my entire life. i've lost my wallet, therefore having to get a new maryland state license, which took 5 trips.
and now, because i had to get a new maryland license, it is against the law for me to have a car with a title and registration in another state. another bureaucratic hurdle to get over. so far, i've had to go to the DMV four times, still no new registration (with far too much detail of the saga to write here.)
i decided on the most recent trip to go to another MVA place, this time in Essex, MD a little northwest of the city. maybe it would be better.
the Baltimore City MVA is not a pleasant experience - mostly because I feel that I could get stabbed there at any moment if for some reason I cut in line. positioned squarely in the ghetto (near joy's school, in fact), the MVA people are not only snarky, they are outright rude. uncomfortable, to say the least.
hoping the Essex office would be better, i got in the car with the sincere belief that this time, this time will be the last. i get in the insanely long line at 8:30 am and mind my own business. there is an old woman who's decided to tell her whole MVA situation to anyone who'll listen (you know those people in line), and looks for someone who will respond. it sure as hell isn't going to be me. too early for that crap.
instead, it's a rather portly middle-aged man behind her with a tigger-appliqued green polo shirt and terrible mandals. they talk about MVA business for a bit, then they talk about the state of the world.

a short paraphrase:
man: well, i think the world is coming to an end pretty soon, the signs are here. we're going in the wrong direction. do you agree?
woman: yes, but those are my personal opinions.
man: well if you agree with me why don't you tell me?
woman: because those are my per....my opinions that no one else needs to know.
man: you do agree with me -- let me hear it!...well, i'll tell you why...
sarah (in her head): oh crap, here it comes. Obama's ruining the world and he's making us socialists. i'm so not ready for this.
man: it's because the U.N. is going to shut down all the churches. i believe in the Truth. do you know the Truth...i'll tell you.
sarah: oh no...takin it the religious route. this line is far too long.

i won't go any further, but here's what it boils down to -- i couldn't escape a jehovah's witness telling this first old woman and then another woman with 4 children for two hours (!) that they are wrong, they don't know the Truth (note the capital T) and that they and their children are going to hell if they don't follow the Truth. the Truth tells them these things, the end is near.

did i mention the Truth? and that i'm going to hell?

i would've rather been rudely treated by the counter attendant and had a fear of being stabbed.

i can't win.

uh-oh (dirty words)

i'm taking it easy today - no need to do more work than i'm getting paid for, so today i'm attempting to hunker down and write this fatty scholarship application for george washington (clearly from this blog post i'm not making a lot of progress). scholarship applications are always a bunch of b.s. anyway, but this one is a career development scholarship, so i have to analyze the course i'll be taking in the fall and connect them with my current job and so forth. in two pages i have to tell them: 1.) why my coursework will enhance my current position, using specific examples from the courses as evidence (mind you, these are course i have never taken) 2.) why the duties performed in my current job will make me a better student (in courses i have never taken) and 3.) how this relationship will get my further towards my career goals (which i'm not quite sure of yet).
don't they understand that people go to grad school when they don't know what they want to be when they grow up? get with it, george washington -- don't play dumb with me.
regardless, i dug into the course descriptions and the classes i'll be taking in the fall and i've come to a few conclusions.
- i am not jazzed about taking economics AND applied statistics in the fall.
- i don't want to be in nonprofit fundraising FOREVER...it's nice now, but i dunno.
- i want to do policy research to help push for better urban education programs (a big dream, i know) and convince legislators to actually do something about it instead of letting kiddos in shitty schools with untrained and not good teachers continue to flounder.
- i want to work on Capitol Hill (or at least be involved in it for a good long while).

i took a look at a couple of policy research organizations in education, and i liked what i saw. problem is, this might be the nail in the coffin for future family gatherings with the Weakley clan. i might want to be a....LOBBYIST.
crap.
oh. good. lord. i hope andy won't disown me.

falling down on the job

the job of reading, that is.
i finally pushed through (and loved) Lush Life by Richard Price. he is one of the co-writers for The Wire (which did nothing for Baltimore's reputation), and you could tell. the dialogue was snappy and slang-filled -- it was like watching a very very well written version of a cop show. my dad would most likely like this book, as my childhood was peppered with almost every cop/detective show that has come out in last 15 years. i was pissed when they canceled Homicide: Life on the Streets. i'm pretty sure i was the only 12 year old to mourn its passing on network television.
but more than that, the book was able to follow the tracks of two detectives in New York through their frustrations: with the friend of the victim who they thought for sure did it, canvassing the housing projects for witnesses, going into the projects filled with 10 Filipino men crowded into one room, dealing with the press, the victim's family. the novel was...grimy. my junior year English teacher told us to never say, "they painted a picture." but if Price's writing is that of an artist, he would not be Bob Ross. perhaps Pollack. lots going on, slightly upset, spattered with meaning in every paragraph. and also, i haven't read a book where i have to work to figure out the mystery myself - i love putting the puzzle of a book together, and this one was excellent.
mmm...books. i've missed you.
currently reading: John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead. i LOVED his debut, The Intuitionist. read it.