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February 14, 2005
Happy Valentine's Day
I have been scolded for my overall lack of communication lately, so I thought I would take 20 minutes (before the guests arrive for an impromtu potluck) and write down everything that's been happening lately.
I got a new pair of earrings from my Mom today. She has an amazing ability to send things so they arrive on the special occasion, and today was no exception. In honor of the new jewelry, I put aside my grubby sweatshirt in favor of a pink sweater AND make-up. Sure, my legs weren't shaved, but I can only do so much.
I had a thesis meeting with Ronan today, and we had our first teleconference with the GRI people. They seemed interested in our project and will be providing us with some information tomorrow. Then, next week, they will have a meeting in London that will hopefully give us even more background information. So right now I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thesis. I'm still working on the literature review for my section (the history and trends of sustainability reporting), which is now up to 17 single-spaced pages. I've formatted all the old articles, now I'm just going through the 20 or so additional articles that I've compiled to make sure I haven't missed anything.
Tomorrow my goal is to write to my old company and see if they will provide me with financial information on our sample group of companies. I know they have the databases that house the information we have, so it's just a matter of playing on their goodwill.
Also tomorrow, I am going to draft a final email to Tarkett, the company that we worked with last semester for the Strategic Management class. We're going to try and get feedback from the Environmental Communications guy, and to wrap up the project. At this point, we are frustrated (and a little bit--no, make that VERY--angry) at what we see as manipulation by one of our fellow students who is trying to leverage this project into additional consulting work. I hope that we can resolve this without it turning into a big mess.
I re-arranged my room last night, so now the bed is in front of the window and the desk is directly next to the door. I decided to do this primarily so I can work on the internet from the desk, which was previously impossible because the internet cord wouldn't reach all the way to the window. So for the last 2-3 months, I've been dragging my computer over to my bed whenever I needed the internet. Now that I'm doing hard-core research for the thesis, sitting slumped on the bed for hours at a time just wasn't making sense. It took me forever last night to fall asleep--I kept getting disoriented and wanting to look out the window at the snow, which has continued to fall.
Right now, there are 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, and there is a constant sleet/snow falling. It's that really tiny, biting snow that doesn't really accumulate, but it painful to walk through--particularly since I lost my hat on the bus last week. I LOVED that hat. I got it on the road trip up to Oregon before my freshman year of college. So now, almost ten years later, I was very sad to be missing it. Not the least of which is because it is not expected to get above freezing this week.
Nothing much else is going on. Jess is now involved with another classmate, so she's not home much. It's very cute, even though they aren't "officially" together and not too many people know. But I woke up the other morning to him singing in the shower, so I suppose it's not too undercover. Roya is in a fit of group planning, scheduling potlucks, group trips to Germany (which I am skipping--I couldn't care less about integrated transportation), resume-improvement meetings, and movie nights.
I'm thinking now that I won't go home in March, but will instead use the time to travel around here. In my grand scheme, I will tour northern Europe (doing a 2-week Stockholm-Helsinki-Riga-Tallin-Vilnius trip in March) this semester, and then do southern Europe after the program ends. Maybe this is the solo vacation I've been wishing for these last few years!
Let's see--10 minutes left. Perhaps I should stop now and go help Roya prepare some food. More later...
