Making the most of my time

After a casual job interview a few weeks ago at the local coffee shop, I realized that if I were to actually get a permanent job, I would probably have to suffer the same fate as 99% of the rest of the American working world and only get two weeks vacation per year. Since this horrible revelation, I have been trying to pack in as much stuff into my weekdays as possible, things that I would normally have to take vacation time to complete. I went to the optometrist for my annual eye exam, booked a dental appointment, and yesterday hung out at the Massachusetts RMV all afternoon to get my out of state license converted. However, it didn't surprise me to find that I will have to return to the RMV and use another what would be 'vacation day' because one of my four forms of identification was not valid. Ergh. (The Watertown RMV is a total mad house and the line always spills out the door--yesterday one particularly stressed customer actually snapped in the waiting area and started shouting and caused a scene, which thankfully helped pass the time).

Last week I was able to participate in one of the Waltham Land Trust's trail building projects. I spent three hours raking a new trail (I was sore for the next several days), but it felt good to be able to make myself useful. Very luckily, I did not get poison ivy (there was an unbelievable amout in the reserve and I felt that I was constantly bumping into it--I guess I must have washed down afterwards really well), but unluckily a pod of 2-3 dozen tent caterpillars fell on my hat and down my back and arms. That was really terrible.

I have also managed to get in contact with the Waltham Kiwanis Club. They recently stopped holding regular meetings due to poor attendance, but I was still invited to help them at the soup kitchen on Monday and a few days later attended their monthly board meeting. It will be great to keep active with Kiwanis and possibly get involved with the Bently College Circle K, which seems to be relatively strong.

More recently, I found on the Brandeis Classifieds a 'wanted' section for research study participants. I have already booked myself to participate in a few memory/cognition experiments at a lab on campus. I love reading about the outcomes of these sorts of psychology studies and I think it will be fun to see what they are like first hand! As the icing on the cake, I get paid a whopping $8/hr, which is $8/hr more than I get paid now ;o)