Look Ma, I'm in a magazine!

First things first: the spring bulbs bloomed! Here's a photo of a couple daffodils (taken at night--excuse the quality).

Okay, so it's not exactly the ten thousand at a glance, but it's good enough.
Second, I must apologize for my lengthy absence. I'm not sure where April went. I think it got lost in this pile of boxes somewhere, since I spent a lot of April working out details for the Women's Conference school kits Humanitarian project I helped out with.

My last excuse is that I have recently started taking a statistics class. Before you yell for all to hear "Are you crazy?" Let me explain. After much deliberation, I have, indeed decided to go to graduate school, if anyone will take me. Part of that process for one program I will be applying for is taking an undergraduate-level statistics class. The professor in charge of that program suggested I take it before I take the GRE, since it will help with the math portion of the test. Considering I haven't cracked a math book in 10 years (and my last experience involved getting a big fat 1 on the AP Calculus test--yep, they actually give out 1s on AP tests), I took his advice. The only problem is, instead of enjoying sandy beaches this summer, I'll be calculating standard deviations. I'm not sure what I was thinking.

However, I did try to take Wordsworth's advice this weekend and let Nature be my teacher. I went to the park for a couple of hours while I did my stats homework yesterday. The weather was beautiful and really one of the first outside-weather days I've seen all year. Nature was indeed my teacher, but instead of teaching "truth breathed by cheerfulness," it taught me, once again, that fair-skinned people should stay away from exposure to the sun at all costs. A nice, uneven sunburn is always a good way to start off the season of hotness. Enough on that tangent.

I must say that part of my problem is that one of the last things I want to do when I come home from work is write more. I'm a writer, for heaven's sake. What's my problem? After thinking about this, I've decided that it's because I write or deal with words all day long in my profession, and to be a good, creative, and successful writer, I need to not be a writer 40 hours a week writing something else. I need to be a writer 40 hours a week writing the great American novel (ha). I can't really help that situation right now, so I guess the Pulitzer (or Newberry) will have to wait (more of a loud, raucous burst of laughter this time) until I'm independently wealthy and retired.

Oh, and one more random thought for the day: my face--and shoes--officially made it into the June issue of the magazine. I'm sorry to disappoint you all, but I don't actually have a copy of the magazine just yet, but I've seen it out there. I'll post a picture when I get it for you all to enjoy. I say "enjoy" because the photo they used of me was one I begged the designers not to use, but for some odd reason they loved it. After seeing it, the editor-in-chief came over to my cube and said, "I just saw your photo for the shoe shoot. I've never seen that side of you before." Yeah. I know you're all curious now, but you'll just have to wait for the photo, or you'll have to pick up a copy of the magazine from the newsstand.