My updated wall decor...
 

After conversation with peaches....  

:)

My peaches called me tonight...slightly Margarita-cated:)...but none the less it was a pleasure to hear her voice. I miss her solidity and cleverness and little peculiar - all sense - making ways. Her thoughtful deep brown eyes and the bright white smile. Her little tip-toe walk and her storm of flavours in the kitchen. The homy flair has long since withered away, and I know it left the moment that she closed the door of this house behind her and took her fragrant ways of living with her to big NY.
And I am living in her room....with my things....trying to mold it into a temporary shelter for my body. But it is so lonely not to have her around. It is a great find to have a great friend and a great loss not to have such a friend around you when you need a familiar voice, look and approval.

Love you a whole lot...

feeling feeble

...lately(or maybe not lately at all, but this whole last month) things and expecially little things have gone astray...maybe it is the downside of the cycle of the ups and downs or maybe I'm just more sensitive and have lost the thick skin for absorbing the everyday stuff...
I really don't want to be a weiner but things keep pushing me to be one...like finances (and people keep saying it is only money it comes and goes), but when it goes and goes suddenly you awake with the knot in your throat and realize it goes too fast and how can I possibly stop it. I guess the cycle is vicious. I had a good time a month ago and now I have to "pay" for it with a downer month of sorts. Sometiems I think I have tied myself up so tight I have left no breething room for myself and I'm afraid to suffocate. I want to be free, yet I want things to be in order and I also want things....and I think maybe this last WANT has made me put myself at a volnerable spot. Growing up with much of nothing I think I have the posessive drive of feeling the stable ground underneath me and fast. Maybe I have stretched myself out way too thin... and way too fast as well...How do other people do it? Maybe not too often I see other people crying about it. I seems everyone has some sort of hold on their lives or maybe people take it as inevitable part of life...they are one with the stress and will keep living..

..I am scared...for the first time in my life I think I am financially scared of will I make it on my own. I have survived for a little over a year but will I last much longer?I am at a place where everything suddenly seems too expensive, where new things are unreachable. And I am thinking about purchasing a condo yet I'm thinking "with what u silly girl"??? People int his country save for things like that but it will be a while before I'll get close to being able to enter the saving mode. I want to rely on myself, but I'm not sure I am so dependable. I don't know for whatever eason I refused my fathers offer for help. It's just it seems like people like him probably need their own money more then I do. I thought I am strong and I am young and I will make it somehow,, yet the somehow factor sometimes is sooo scary. Should I give up my car? Will I be renting for ever? How exactly will I pay off all of my debt? I am soo tired. I went to the dentist today in the morning. I got there at 8.30 and left at 1.00p.m. and at the end she presented me with the future bill of works $9,000? I'm not sure if I am insane but for all the things I have payed the dentists in USA i think I could have made a good downdeposit on a good condo already. Or maybe I should have become a dentist, because I don't think I need a work worth $9,000 done. All I want is a beautiful smile without an insane price tag. But here is the mean face of capitalism on the other side facing me. I came to work and I burst out into tears, partially from pain from anestesia wearing off but partially because I felt so alone, so absolutelly alone....I konw I have parents but I can't burdain then with my problems they have problems of their own. I know they will worry and try to helo me with their little income, but that would be such an injustice for them to have to send their earnings to me where money just dissapears out of the wollet the minute you open it. ...ok I didn't mean to complain and for all I know I tried to be discrete with my problems even here and keep the wining to the minimum. I just wish sometiems I coudl rent a shoulder and an ear to talk and cry on. And this sounds pathetic because I do have friends, my problem only how do you interupt a friends day and potentially a positiv outlook on life with my bleak state of mind. It is not fair. I love life, yet sometimes there is so much of it and so little control over it and it is so easy to feel completely lost.

NO MORE BRACES!!!

Hey...I can't believe it....a milestone..
I got my braces off today 10.05a.m.:) to be more precise. And in place I got retainers:).....but that is so much better to be able to pop them out of your mouth whenever you're tired of them not like with braces. I can't believe these are my own teeth:) seems I haven't seen them for 2 years and 20 days....
now I can eat EVERYTHING:) not that I didn't eat everythinh before (well maybe not caramel and sticky, chewy candy) but pretty much everything else.

I have to wear the retainer for 6 weeks and then a stop at the Orthordontist again for evaluation. If everything is going oki, doki, then retainers only for a night time. If teeth still shifting then 6 months more....ufff.but that's still much better than crazy braces. Teeth are so smooth:) and it is nice to be able to feel them with a tounge finally.....ok enough obsessing about the end of braces:)...promise!!!

Work....fine...seems to be picking up finally. Let's see if someone with summon me to come in for the weekend, because a BIG deadline is looming over everyone's head (except mine) right now to get an embassy project out. I hope I don't get asked because I want my Saturday, Sunday to myself.

Sundance..for fiber not for movies:)

...yes indeed. I am in Sundance not to watch a premier of a hot and happening independent movie, but I'm here to learn about fibers, dye lots, colorants and carpet:)..he he he

check it out.....

www.sundanceresort.com

...the resort is nice, mountains are awesome...Salt Lake City.....mmmmm so, so. I just drove through it today and I'm sure there is a WHOLE lot more to it but from the first glance it doesn't look impressive....it just seems like there is so much space in this valley that each and every person got an acre to junk up any way the want to and they sure have. Warehouse after warehouse, car dealership after a car dealership and empty abandonded lots with weeds, rusty vehicles and all kinds of other imaginable junk everywhere. Ok it probably isn't as bad but in comparison to the awesome beauty that surrounds this city, the valley looks bad or unattended to, which is a shame it could have been a paradise surrounded by the magic of the grandeur of mountains.

I was in the airplane flying over the mountains right before the city and remembered Hank's (my favorite architect/co-worker) joke last week where he had seen a car in DC with a bumper sticker that said "stop tectonic plate movement" :):):) it was funny then...but flying over mountains and seeing the evidence of the shift in the earths geological crust made me smile at the awesome sense of humor of the person who came up with the slogan for the sticker:):):) he he he...stop the movement of the earth:)

ok....I'm exhausted actually and overly full from food again. ...the resort is very well organized...I was met in the airport and had a ride over to Sundance. I have a lodge with 2 bathrooms all to myself:)...I've never had a suite with 2 bathrooms all but to myself:) hm what am I to do with them:)
...tomorrows agenda...breakfast, learning and hiking in the mountains & bbq. outdoors for the dinner.....
zzzzzz...I'm going to bed....:)

already Sept. 6th

......Deja Vu is on my mind. Maybe because I bought Beyonce's latest CD last night from Itunes or maybe because I want to associate with a song, because I want to see the past experiances and past faces on the street and in my life and they are not here.
...I am going to a conference in 5 days to Sundance, Utah to learn about carpet and get inspired by nature. I hope something will inspire me because week and a half of work has already returned me to a reality that work, work and more work is in my future for the next year at least and more.
...I met a boy who taught me my first words in Serbian. Papuce - which actually means tennis shoes not regular shoes but I will pardon the incorrect teachings. And Zima - cold for english. Which is also an alcoholic beverage in America, probably in Europe as well. And every time someone in my office calls someone "crazy" I remember a group of fun Serbian people who made my vacation so much more enjoyable in Bulgaria.
Fall is coming and that means less sun. It is amazing how much I love sun. I sat inside the office almost all summer long working long hours and didn't realize how wonderful it is to be outdoors. I thought I'm not missing out on anything. And then once I got to experiance the sun and the sea on my vacation it suddenly hit me how boaring the first part of my summer was and I'm sad again that I only get 2 weeks of vacation for the whole year, because I would gladly fly away somewhere to get more sun and sea.
What's ahead? I need to pass the LEEDs exam a.s.a.p to meet my 6 monts goals at work that I set on my last performance review. I need to start learning Italian as promissed to myself for a long time already. I need to get my finances together at my earliest conveniance before it is still manegable, if not I'll be in deep trouble by Christmas. I need to find a second job to erase faster my student loan of past 5 years already and in general I need to start reading and studying and gearing up for Masters Program...time to get started.

still recovering from vacation

..so I had a few good helpers yesterday and today. My dear mentor came from big apple to visit and take care of some business, but it was nice to see a dear friend.
Don't know if I shouldn't take 3 weeks vacation next time or take some kind of nullifying drug after the vacation to let me forget how good it was when I wasn't at work.

At least this weekend has 3 days in it and I can do nothing and feel sorry for myself, which is pretty pathetic:)
Ok...must leave my chair and go do something....maybe not productive but at least leave the house and smell the air or at least drive the car around.

1st of September, where is my happyness?

The month is right, the date is right....the day is right, it is Friday and the work week is almost over, so why am I sad?
I'm 26 and still asking the same questions I was asking when I was 18. Why, when where and how do we find our happiness? Sometimes it seems like I have it figured out and the rules by which I should be abiding are pretty clear, but when the moment comes and I should follow the ruels, the stupid rules don't work, or are incapable of performing the making sense function, or cheering up function.
I miss my dad and I miss my friends near and far. At least Jenny is coming to visit me this evening with Eric, a little glimmer of cheer, but in general what is to become of the weekend? It is nasty outside, raining and it will probably rain all 3 coming days.
I was having a good time on my vacation and once again thought I can just cut off the emotions (not that I have ever been able to do it). But of course like in previous times, it doesn't work like it. The attachments formed over a course of week, ran deeper then expected and I will need some time before my little heart has calmed down and reason has convinced me that I am being foolish and I should just go on. Besides the main principle which I thought I have figured out, to not build one's happyness around anyone else, is not convincing enough argument again for my heart to detach it in a hurry from the people I've grown to like even if in a short period of time.
Damn ups and downs of this life. We have to pay for every sweet indulgence we've experienced with at least a day or week of utter misery or despair and confussion.

T.G.I.F. is not working for me today.