on the week

well, i don't have much time, but i just wanted to let my avid readers (all ..kate.. of them) know that i haven't lost interest in the blogging yet, it's just been a ridiculously busy week at work. lauren called out monday, so i had to be her and we're already down a person mon & tues, then tues we had this ridiculous 12-page bridal section that no one knew about, and then wednesday is weekend, and today i had to be lin, and we've moved our deadline up from 11 to 10, so now i work 230 to 1030. which sounds better, "ooh, earlier," but it's just a freaking hour. people are still asleep when i get home at 11. and now i just have less time during the day. boooo. oh well. such if life, i suppose.. i'm just tired of people acting like it's a great thing, but mostly they mean well, so i appreciate it even though i shoot it down.

so. in short, this week has been ridiculous. but in good news, sarah finally called, so i am going to see her -- and iain too! -- on saturday (i was getting a little nervous!), which is quite exciting. i'll be driving up into mass somewhere; mapquest says it's about an hour & 40, so we're praying my car makes it, haha. umm i got monday off, so i can go to my mom's party and maybe hanz's if i have time, but either way, i am having lunch with hanz on monday, so woot! in bad news, there's been some unresolved trust issues that i don't really want to talk about but which haven't been my favorite and which may get (at least more) resolved tonight, which i am sort of excited for but not really at all in the same exact breath.

the conversations (emails, i'm so not a phone person) seem to be going well with the old friend, and i'm coming up on some free time (i have been ridiculously busy lately for some reason), so hopefully we will get together and i can actually see her.

in other news, i seem surrounded by bridal whatnot. i read kate's blog regularly, where she posts about her wedding and her hopefully posts from.. weddingbee? i can't remember (sorry! terrible friend, i know). and i recently rented on a whim dvd episodes of a show called 'bridezillas' which follows brides in their planning processes and up through the wedding/reception. some of them they follow for months and some of them we pick up 3 days before, so i dunno how they choose. some of the women are like train wrecks, or more accurately, like the spoiled obnoxious girls on my sweet 16. you hate them but you can't look away! so i've become hooked to that show and been renting the episodes (i'm up through season 2, disc 1-4.. and i'm afraid blockbuster doesn't have any more, which makes me sad!). and then we had that ridiculous bridal section on tuesday (that no one knew and/or did anything about until about noon of that day.. oof!). so yeah. i dunno what's going on, but i feel surrounded by wedding stuff. which is fun but also eeky, cause if the universe is trying to tell me something, i still don't think i'm ready, let alone jon and i being ready together. eep. although i'm not so sure i'll ever be ready. i'm a little envious of people who have no doubts at all, because i'm just not sure i'll ever get to that point.. i don't want to be a divorce cliche, but watching my parents' 20+ year marriage end was sort of hard, especially since i was old enough to really understand what was happening. kind of makes me paranoid, you know? but eh.

man i'm uncomfortable sharing that. but i'm not going to erase it.

why? i don't know. some futile exercise in opening up?

but here's more uncomfortableness, until tomorrow:

this is how my boyfriend throws a frisbee

my favorite is picture 2, and then the ballerina pose in picture 3.

and this is what we look like when we're not being idiots:

but the physics make it impossible

so right now (at work), we are listening to the police scanner, because there is a car that went off into the woods by route 9 and i-91 in cromwell, and as reports come in, it just keeps getting more and more confusing. first they couldn't find the car, which begs the question, how did they know to look for one? but we're betting someone probably saw it go into the woods, so that's one answer. but anyway, then we heard that the car is 100 yards into the woods -- which is the length of a football field; i asked my boss, and he asked one of the sports guys, and they confirmed what i thought was already true. so here's the quandary -- how the hell did a car go 100 yards -- or 300 feet -- into the woods? how did it get that far without hitting anything and/or stopping? how did it get that far without hitting a tree, and why did any of said trees not stop said car? and now we find out that the car started the process by hitting a light fixture, which means it has already lost speed. so either this car was traveling upwards of 200 mph or .. well we don't have an or. we don't get how this is happening. we are confused. confounded police scanner, never offering any answers!!

so. aside from being horribly confused by how a car travels 100 yards into the woods without stopping, i am pretty happy today. mostly because it's friday, but also because i got to see my mom yesterday for lunch and then heather today for lunch, which is more contact with people in one week than i've had in ... man, i don't even know, haha. PLUS tomorrow we are cooking faJitas (and i make bangin faJitas, as kate and sarah can attest to! but mine are not accompanied by gross things like refried beans and malibu... =P) and then going to a birthday party and then sunday we're seeing my dad and possibly my brother. then it will be crappy monday again, but i am choosing to focus instead on the good, such as the fact that now my vacation is four weeks away, probably to the day, cause i'm hoping we can drive up late friday after work. i am anxious to get there as soon as possible, haha. antsy for vaca, i am!

in other news, i have recently been messaging a girl on myspace that i used to be best friends with a long time ago (think fresh/soph year in hs.. and yes, jenni, it's her).. things sort of fell apart when she went to college (she was older) and started doing drugs and things, and it just wasn't really a good scene. but from what she says (which i am sort of taking at face value for now, because she used to lie a lot), she has gotten her act cleaned up and is going to school -- in a weird coincidence, to be a nurse.. she wants to be a flight nurse on lifestar, which is an admirable goal, to be sure. from the review i've just given, she sounds not so good, but i think really she was just sort of messed up and lost, she really is a good person. just got a little ...off track? for awhile. but anyway.. i'm sort of excited to be talking to her again, but i'm trying not to get too into it because i'm a little nervous at the same time. i'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, so we'll see. we're supposed to get together for a drink sometime soon, which should be funny cause she was the person i first got drunk with when i was like 15/16, so it'll be nice to be legal and all, haha. it'll also be nice to see her instead of just message her, because i feel it'll help me figure out if she's on the up and up (where that phrase comes from, i have no idea). we both helped each other through hard periods in her life.. she helped me through my parents' divorce, and she really helped me (God this sounds so corny) figure out who i am and who i wanted to be, both through good things and bad things, accomplishments and mistakes. so i'm hoping she's really doing as well as she says she is, because a) it's good for her and b) it would be cool to be friends with her again. i do have faith that people can turn their lives around, and i hope she's one of them, but i guess that remains to be seen, cause i won't let myself believe it til i see it.

in other other news, i finally talked to my parents about the nursing thing, which is cool. mom was for it and dad said he's for it too, but it's something i've got to really want, which made me pause a little. i'm not entirely certain it's something i'm dying to do, which is why it's a consideration and not a plan yet. but dad suggested seeing if i can find a program shadowing nurse or a program to help me try it on, see if it fits, which is probably a good idea. i am going to talk to my aunt about that when we go to new hampshire, cause i'm assuming she'll be up at some point, and if not, i'll email/call her afterwards. i think i'd like to mull it over a bit more first. i did come up with another reason i'm leaning towards it, and that's cause it'll be challenging (or at least i'm hoping it will be, haha). i feel like i'm not using my brain a lot anymore, and that it's a cryin shame, cause i'm way too smart for that! haha jk. but really, i like to be at least a little challenged, feel like i used my brain, etc. just makes you feel better at the end of the day.

and in completely unrelated news, you should all check out this link my aunt sent me, because it's a really cool little video about the wonders of ever-advancing technology. well, one specific advancement. but a cool one! http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid932579976/bclid932553050/bctid933742930.

my brain hurts

well, i was going to complain all about my night at work, but i decided that in the interests of it not being found out and getting me fired, i guess i'll just say it was a terrible night. things were complicated needlessly, and guess who got to clean up the mess... oooh, i win! ..oh wait, no, that was not a win at all. BOOOO. also, there was a lot of debating and arguing, some ending well and some not, but either way, i am so ready to go home.

in other news, two kids i went to hs with are getting married. schmoopily. they moved in after dating for like 3 days (no, really), and now they are engaged and have already set a date. they have been dating a shorter time than i have been dating jon (which is a year and ... 2 months), and they have already broken up at least once. does anyone really see this going well? one of the best parts is that the guy has a blurb about the girl on his myspace (i myspace stalk them), and in it he says that "she is like my angle." and i can't help but laugh every time.. kate asked if he means she's sent from heaven or she's isosceles, and jon asked if she was acute. and i am superbly glad they also enjoy her being his angle, because it makes me laugh. they are that cliche vomit-inducing couple you know. solely because they are overboard schmoopy, i don't actually think either of them is gross or anything, but they are always professing love and spouting romanticism and .. it's a little much. i mean, i hope they're happy, and i'm all about loving someone and telling them you love them, but i feel like that level of schmoopiness just seems sort of forced. like in that sex & the city episode where carrie & burger have a 'bit' they do when they're fighting, where he dips her and they kiss and everything's magical again, and she tells miranda about it, who says, '...you need a bit?' that's sort of how i feel about all the overboard schmoopiness. (now i'm just seeing how many ways and times i can morph and use the word 'schmoopy.')

well, all i can think about is work, and as i said, i'm not interested in getting fired. those stories about people blogging and then their employers finding out and firing them are scaring me. even though i don't like it here, they give me a paycheck and that's pretty crucial. but since i can't think of anything else and i have no more work to do at this moment, i'm going to see if i can hightail it out of here and head home, where there is food and beer and tv and episodes of bridezillas, all waiting to cheer me up. woot!

success!

i figured it out! i don't have any exciting photos, so for now i'll leave you with one of my favorite strips from calvin & hobbes.

miscellaneous

well, i can't say i'm not a little sad that no one has said anything about my last post.. i'd already talked to kate about it, and sam and i discussed it a little, and i know sarah & iain were winging there way across the pond to the ct, so they all have excuses, but where are the rest of you? help a girl out, ey?? it's okay, i realize i'm not the center of everyone's universes (although why, i don't know), but if you guys get a minute i really do want to know what you think.

i did discuss it with jon more, but i got a lot of "okay" .. "okay" .. "okay" .. as i listed my points of benefit and concern, and i had to ask specific questions -- ie, do you think i should do it? is this a good idea? will i be any good at it? -- in order to get more than "okay." but to be fair, he was having a cranky day.. i'd talked to him a couple times during the day and he was a little crankypants, and so i probably shouldn't have launched into the (heavy) subject shortly after arriving home friday night.. i thought he was feeling better, but he was a little more lackluster than i'd hoped for. if we're going to do this -- because it's not just my life that will be affected -- i want him to be excited about it, or at least a gung-ho supporter. so "okay" was better than "whatever" or "i don't care in the very least" but i could use a little more of a push, i think. but that's beside the point and probably just me being insecure about a life-changing decision, and when i did ask the specific questions he said he does think i should do it ("if you want to".. haha) and that he does think i'd be good at it. and he pointed out that i have done a fair share of thinking on this and there wasn't a lot he could add to it since i'd already thought of everything and thought of ways to combat all the concerns (ie, loans for money, us both working part-time, possible helping each other study, etc). which is pretty legitimate, i've been beating all the points to death in my head.

on a more random note, i finally saw pirates!! i won't use any specifics in case someone hasn't seen it, but i enjoyed it. i wasn't terribly thrilled with the ending, but aside from that it was funny and i didn't even notice how long it was (i was a little afraid it would be too long for my gnat-like attention span), minus the fact that i had to pee about 40 minutes into it and we were sandwiched in the middle of a full aisle and i didn't want to miss anything, so i held it, which wasn't the most fun part of the evening, haha. but i was pretty stoked to finally see it and i was pleasantly fulfilled. i was a bit irritated by the end, as i said, especially because they TOTALLY left it open for a fourth one -- which, according to my brother, is already being filmed, but i can't confirm or deny that -- which just irritates me because it makes me feel used. they know i'm going to watch another one if it comes out and i know i'm going to watch another one if it comes out, but you don't need to rub it in my face. i don't need a teaser to drag me into the next one.. if anything, it makes me less likely to go watch it in theaters just out of spite. damn the man! (..save the empire!)

on another random note, my brother called me friday night to ask when i was getting together with dad because he got scheduled to work later so he could do lunch (he's normally working), and i was pretty pumped so i told him i'd tell dad and we'd do lunch. so i texted my dad because i know he knows how to read them (doesn't seem like rocket science to us, but technology is hard for some older people). usually he runs to a computer (or just opens a new window if he's already on one, which is highly likely) and writes a reply from his email to my phone, but this time, he actually TEXTED me back! and then i wrote him back, and he wrote me back, and we proceeded to have a lovely little texting conversation, during all of which i was thrilled and amused that my father knows how to have -- and will have -- a texting conversation. how cool is my dad, honestly??

also cool about my dad is VACATION in july is coming up, when we all pilgrimage to my aunt's place on lake wentworth in new hampshire, for which i am TERRIBLY EXCITED!! i may or may not have the full week off work, but i may or may not quit and go anyway, so basically i am planning to be up there. they keep changing whether or not i'll have my vacation, cause one of my bosses is going to be on maternity leave somewhere around the end of june/beginning of july, and i get that she needs time for that (and her husband, who also works here), but i don't feel like it's fair that because she's adding to her family, i am missing mine. so first i got told it was gonna get denied, then i got told it was getting approved, then it actually got denied, but now it's been resubmitted by the exec editor (who outranks the baby-having boss) and on its way to the publisher to be approved, so theoretically i'll have my vaca. but this will be the first in a couple years that i will NOT be working for a FULL week. and jon has it all off (except wed & fri, which he assures me will not be a problem to get off, but make me nervous anyway), so we are both going up, AND! my brother and his gf (tiana) are also going to be up from i think sun-thurs, which is freaking awesome because i can't remember the last time he and i were on vacation together. last year, we literally passed each other on the highway.. they left wednesday and were arriving back in ct just as jon & i were about to cross the mass border on the way up, which was cool cause they left us some food & beer, but i'd rather have eric there than free beer. (and maybe i can worm free beer out of him WHILE he's there... oooh, new plan!) and i'm hoping enslin can come visit me, and we're trying to get jon's cousin & her husband (sarah & eli) up for the first weekend to play as well. but it's a lovely time of laying on a float on a lake, taking booze cruises on the pontoon boat, eating & drinking, relaxing, watching movies, doing puzzles, reading, whatever. just lovely. i'm sure my dad will take a million pictures, so i'll post some after ...and as soon as i know how, haha. vaca isn't til the last week of july anyway, but i am already pumped!

now, what's coming BEFORE the vaca that i'm excited for, you may ask. and i may answer, well! sarah & iain and i have a rendezvous planned for the end of june, although where i have no idea, haha, but i am super pumped/excited/stoked/thrilled (all being words i have already used. man, i guess things are good, eh??) to see them. i will not be bringing a belated wedding gift because i am poor, but hopefully my presence will be enough, haha. also on the list of exciting things is HARRY POTHEAD coming out in july -- the book AND the movie!!! i might pee myself, for pete's sake. umm.. i think that same week is the hawthorne heights show which i am excited to go to. i'm sure there's more, but those are on my list for now.

my plan for the rest of the night now includes reveling in fingernail-biting anticipation of the events to come, and to see if i can post a picture, cause i just saw a button that says "add image," so i'm going to try that. and then i'm going to go do some work (pffffft).

as always, oodles and oodles of love to you all.

the cliffhanger's conclusion

and now (dun dun dun), the big life-changing decision. i'm not moving to africa to help small children, but for me it would be a big change. as you probably all know, i hate my job with an unrequited passion (although who knows, maybe it hates me too!), and i have now been considering giving up journalism for some time. it's just not a good scene. there's no real money in it, and the higher you get in the ranks, the fewer pages you actually make, which is my favorite part of the job, and the more people you manage, which i imagine would be okay but not terribly exciting. and i'm frustrated every day by idiots who don't know what they're doing, so i think that moving up in the ranks and not being hands-on to be able to fix their idiotic errors would drive me bonkers. oh, and we get five holidays a year -- that we have to work, cause people need their stupid paper every stupid day, even if it means we have to work christmas or new year's or .. you get the idea. we're not even paid extra for the holidays, all we get is a day off another time. whoop-dee-freaking-do, i'd rather have christmas off than some day another time.

so anyway. these reasons have all led me to the conclusion that journalism is maybe not so much the way to go, along with the fact that i hate the hours, and unless i find an evening paper, these will be my hours for the reset of my career -- a fact that makes me want to cry, because i am tired of not seeing anyone ever. so i've just been putting my zip code into monster, hotjobs, etc, to try to find a job, any job. but lately i've been giving one particular career path some extra thinking, and i emphasize that this is just thinking and nowhere near a plan yet. but i have been considering going back to school and getting a degree to be a nurse. we'll go over the positives and negatives of said plan in due time, but i'll start with why i'm considering it.

there are three main reasons. the first is that i would be helping people, which is something that i may not mention a lot but which bugs me about my current job. i don't feel like i'm making the world a better place, and i figure if i'm going to be here (on earth), i might as well leave it a better place than i found it. that said, i'm not really into flying to third-world countries and/or i just don't have the resources available to do so anyway. i'm more interested in something i can sink my teeth into than any of the numerous fantastic causes that exist, like stopping blood diamond wars and AIDS in africa and world hunger and world poverty and... you get the idea. the point is, i would be making the world a better place. maybe it wouldn't be monumental, but it would be something, and that's much more than i'm doing now.
the second reason is, i won't lie, the money. i know i've been pretty lucky in life, but at the same time, i have been stretching every dollar i've ever earned -- with the exception of the loan i took out when i went to scotland, which i am now stretching every dollar to pay back -- to pay all my bills, and i am tired of it. i recently saw an ad for a manager at smokey bones to make between $40 and $50,o00, and it almost made me cry, because i make $24,700. and i literally can't afford life. jon pays almost all of our bills, and he works 72 hours a week to do so, which isn't fair and makes me feel terrible. he volunteered, but still, i am not a fan. i want to be able to pull my weight. i don't want to be rich, but i would like to be able to pay my bills without worrying -- just pay them when they're due, not when i get paid. i'd like to be able to go to the movies or go to dinner or make a doctor's appointment and be able to afford the copay. i know everybody stresses about money, it's just a part of life, but i'm pretty over it. and nurses make good money.
the third reason is job security. nurses are pretty much always in demand, and especially now, as my aunt (who owns a couple branches of interim health care) constantly reminds me, there is a huge shortage at least in ct and presumably elsewhere as well. i don't have any plans to move out of ct for the moment, but i like knowing that if i did, i could probably still find a job anywhere i go (coincidentally, this drew me to editing too). i also like the fact that my aunt said people/places are so hard up for nurses that you can even get help to go to school nowadays, which would help me out.
a fourth smaller reason that i like the idea is that it would put jon and me in similar fields -- different enough that we're not competing but similar enough that we can share stories and lives. this will also come under the concerns list, though, so we'll get to that.

so. those are the reasons i am drawn to it, and i guess the positives are also covered in said list, haha. so now we'll move on to the negatives/drawbacks/reasons it is still a consideration and not a plan.
1 -- science was always the hardest for me in school. not impossible, but the one i always had to work the hardest at. i think i would be okay, but i know it would be a LOT of work. i mean, i'm not new at school, so i get the concept of a lot of work. i wouldn't have been able to do this awhile ago because i was burnt out, but i think now, with a specific goal in mind, i could do it, i could go back to school. especially because i'm hoping i won't have to take all the gen eds again, just the courses for the actual degree, but i'd have to make sure first. but back to the science. i took ap bio and got a 3 (out of 5) on the exam, so i'm clearly not super deficient in science, but i did get a 71 in both chem and physics -- barely passing. anatomy & physiology i think i could do, because my favorite parts of science were learning about how the body works. organic chem scares the shit out of me, though.. i know i'm smart and i know i could do it, but i am just nervous/scared about the bulk of my courses being science courses when that was the one subject that always held me back and actually made me really work for it.
2 -- i am not good with other people's vomit and poop. which, i think, as kate already told me and i agree, i'd get over it. i am thinking a lot of it is just exposure, and after it happens a couple times, i'll get used to it and move on. i also know that there's a lot of paths you can take with a nursing degree, and i'm secretly hoping to find one that minimizes the exposure to vomit and poop, although i plan to have children some day, so i might as well suck it up and get over it, right? so not worth wasting much time on this one, i guess..
3 -- this is probably the second biggest, after science scaring me, and i touched on this in the good, but it's also a source of concern -- i don't want it to become a competition between jon and myself. i think you all know he's an emt (has been for about 2 years now i think?), and i know how important ems is to him. i also know he's competitive by nature, and i know i am too a bit, and i do NOT want it to become about who's better at what. i was discussing my nursing consideration with him, and he said something along the lines of 'but if you go to school for nursing, i have to go too, because i can't let you become a nurse before i do!' which sort of cemented my fear that this will become a competition. the other thing is that i know i am good at school.. it's just one of those things that clicks for me, and i know school is harder for him, which gives him the mistaken impression that he's not as smart as i am even though he is, and this is why i feel competition over school would be a bad idea. but he is possibly going to medic (paramedic) school in either september or january, and i am hoping that if i go to nursing school at the same time, it won't be a competition, because we'll be in different schools. i am still a little afraid, though, because i think a lot of the curriculum will be the same, but i am just hoping that it will be different enough to eliminate any 's/he got a better grade' or 's/he kicked my ass on that test' or 'why does s/he get it and i don't', etc. the other idea is that by both being in difficult schools that will take up a LOT of time, maybe neither of us will get resentful about how we have no time together because we'll both be busy. i know that we already only see each other on the weekends, basically, which isn't my favorite, but i can live with it, and i also know that i will probably be resentful of his medic class if i am not also doing something that consumes my time and keeps me busy, so i'm kind of figuring that if i am also going to school we'll be okay.
4 -- money. as i already mentioned, i am hoping i can defer repayment on my loans until i graduate again, but this is not something i am certain of.. i'm about 75%, but that 25% is worrying me. if i can't defer my loans, i would have to keep a full-time job, which would make homework, studying and hours in hospitals very hard to do. i figure i'll have to keep a part-time job in order to keep some money coming in, but i am basically planning on taking out loan(s) to make this work. i am also planning to look into what my aunt said about getting help from the state/elsewhere to go to nursing school. the other trick is jon will also be in medic school and needing time for school homework studying hours, etc, and so we had already talked about taking out a loan to get us through that. if we can defer my loan payments, that will help -- about 450$ a month less that will be going out the door -- but that still leaves the apartment & all its fees (electricity, etc), gas money, grocery money.. the essentials. so if we both work part time and take out a loan, it might be possible. we'd have to sit down and figure it all out, though. especially because his credit is bad and we don't know what mine is (i want to hope it's good, but who knows), so we may need a cosigner to get a bigger loan. and then afterwards we'd have more payments to make, but i'm hoping the increase in pay on both our parts will help out with that. so again, something we'd need to sit down and actually do some math, make sure we'd still be doing all right on the other end of this equation.

medic school is about a year, and i'm assuming 2-3 years to finish nursing school (although i really don't know). so yeah. this isn't a snap your fingers and the world changes so much as it is put in a hell of a lot of effort and the world will change slowly. but i guess why i'm posting this so you guys can read it is so you can give me any thoughts, suggestions, opinions, concerns.. i want to know if you think this sounds like a good idea, or a bad one, if you think i can handle being a nurse, if you don't think i can, if you think it will be okay with jon and me, if there's anything i can do to make it less of a competition, ... etc. anything you can come up with, good bad or indifferent, i want to know.. you can leave comments here or email me if you prefer to keep your thoughts private. you guys are all people i trust to tell me the truth, so.. have at it.

love to you all, and thanks in advance for your help! also, i am not really planning on such giantly important posts, so keep reading the blog, because i think usually posts will be whimsical stories and rants, not heavy discussions. woot!

a bit of explaining

i find myself inspired by kate and her blog, though it may be on xanga and not blogger, and by sarah's posts on facebook. the idea that i can post sporadically or often (i will try for often but make no promises) and all of my faraway friends can read it makes me happy, because i am sure you all know i am terrible at writing emails and keeping in touch the conventional way. so i am hoping that this will help make my life accessible to my globe-trotting/living friends. right now i am done with work, so this is to be a short post, but i plan to write more tomorrow when i have tons of time to waste at work.

the explaining also covers the blog title and url, those being 'to love a vehement love' and detainedbytheworld.blogspot or whatever (i haven't learned it yet, haha). 'to love a vehement love' comes from a story my ancient greek teacher (that is, teacher of ancient greek, not an ancient teacher of greek) had us read in my second year. it didn't really have a title, but it's commonly (hah, cause obscure ancient greek stories are common) referred to as an ephesian tale or as xenophon of ephesus' tale of romance or .. you get the idea. xenophon wrote it, though not the famous xenophon (again, because ancient greek writers are famous), and it took place (or at least began) in ephesus. either way, the story is about habrocomes and anthia, two star-crossed lovers that endure terrible tragedies -- including gay pirates -- and throughout it all, they love a vehement love for each other. it repeats often, usually because in the time it was "written," most stories were told and they were usually in a certain meter, ie, iambic pentameter. in order to make them easier to remember, the "writers" often used recurring phrases (which, side note, is often why in the iliad and the odyssey people are referred to with epithets -- gray-eyed athena, brave odysseus, etc). "love a vehement love" was one in this particular story, and i just loved it, so i decided to call my blog that, because i am forever in love with people and the world. or, i am forever in hate, but either way, it's a strong emotion, haha.
the actual web address comes from a book kate introduced me to, 'stardust' by neil gaiman, in which they leave a note at the end that says "have been unavoidably detained by the world.. expect us when you see us" because they decided it would be better to wander off and travel instead of stay in one place and be boring. this ideal has always appealed to me, and lacking anything better, i made it my blog address.

and now, it is 11:30, so i am going to leave work. until tomorrow, when i have a monumental post. (ooooh, the teaser!) the truth is i am considering a pretty big life-changing decision and i am hoping for input from any of you who may read this, because i am going to send the url to those i care about the most, my dear far-flung friends. (holy alliteration, batman!)