I had a really good night tonight!

I think the whole feeling-kind-of-down after graduation thing has a lot to do with just learning how to manage a lot of free time, something I've never been very good at. It's important to remember that this is my Vacation! and my Time Off! and lord knows when I'll have this kind of free time just to read and loaf around again. Here are some things that have made me very happy in the past week since I've returned from Connecticut:

- First Thursday with Tanya (graduate student from Corey's lab) and her husband, this amazing incredibly funny guy from Turkey who works as a professional photographer. Dinner with them at the Virginia Cafe and walking around visiting the different art galleries was really fun. It was really nice to be out and social with so-called "grown-up" people as opposed to just other college students, i.e. Reedies.
- checking out books about liberation theology from the county library and writing down graduate schools. Today, Comparative Literature, tomorrow, Creative Writing! (hey, I've only been out of school for three weeks, a girl can dream...)
- finished and submitted application for Americorps position with SE Works for the hoo-hah of it. I was upset about all the typos in my outgoing e-mail but got a very friendly-souding follow-up from them so I don't think that's a problem.
- Reading Down and Out in Paris and London and a collection of interviews with Portland's homeless in preparation for the Plunge. Very interesting. Oh, that Orwell.
- Lauren's birthday party on Friday! She's basically my primary friend left in the Portland area now, besides Eira... Also going to the coast this Saturday this Corey: one of the professors from the biology department at PSU has a house there and is going to host a huge clam bake. We're bringing our tent and sleeping bags and plan to camp out on the sand. I also want to watch at least one NBA playoff game with my brother, who is normally so busy with classes, hopefully Sunday...
- Long walk with Corey on Tuesday down Springwater trail, looking for mushrooms, finding mainly LBMs (little brown mushrooms) on people's lawns. The crazy-looking petal-shaped mushroom I found a couple of days ago which I got really excited about because Corey couldn't identify it turned out of to be a lichen. Oh, well. We wandered for ages and ended up on Milwaukee and at sushi at that place on Bybee that always has a really long line. BEST SUSHI I've ever had in my life. I'll definitely have to take my parents there, if/when/who knows they move here.

Corey just drank just gin by accident instead of water. "It kind of tasted like a pop tart," he says. I really want to go to bed...
Trying to keep in mind main message of book "Man's Search For Meaning," or at least the main message I remember from the concentration camp bits (I didn't really read the logotherapy bits, wasn't interested): we can't choose what happens to us, but we can always choose what attitude we want to adopt in face of what happens to us...