Written while I should have been reading textbooks

I see this ad almost everytime I ride the rapid, and wonder if this is actually a viable career training program or some kind of weird scam. As a fan of talk radio, I was under the impression that its an industry that is fairly hard to break into! I'm leaning scam.

As the end of our lease approaches, Ryan & my thoughts have turned to where we are going to live starting this summer. Though our two bedroom apartment on the westside of Cleveland has been a significant upgrade from our two bedroom apartment in the eastside inner-ring Cleveland suburbs, its really starting to feel a little cramped.



So we've been thinking about buying a house, after we did the maths & realized that the Cleveland housing market (benefits of living in the non-Chicago Midwest!) and our savings probably allowed for it. So we've been spending a lot of time scouring hotpads, which honestly makes it look like almost every single house in NEO is for sale. After 7 years (more like 12, in Ryan's case) of landlords the idea of owning is pretty exciting. Like, you mean we can put whatever screws we want in the wall? Sold.

While it seems that housing for sale in our neighborhood is either more trouble than we want or out of our price range, we are thinking that we want to stay on the westside of town. But, perhaps we might also consider moving to the southside, so that we would then have lived on every side of the city. Unless, as ryan said, we were to move to one of the islands in Lake Erie and thus have lived on the northside. And then, of course, there's also downtown.

With my impending dissertation research (i guess a year and change off is a little outside of 'impending,' though) and the aforementioned housing thoughts, mostly my mind has been on money lately. Fellowships, grants, interest rates, you know. Other than that, Ryan & I have been working on keeping warm, and going to a lot of thrift stores. This, of course, is where I found that great sequin-shouldered sweater dress pictured on the left, which i unfortunately didn't buy since I don't live a life where you can wear that. Or, maybe I do. But I'm not sure how it might reflect on my character to the rest of the world. Probably in a way that makes me appear to have more gumption than I actually have.

Fortunately I was also able to find some boring adult pencil skirts and preppy flats. This hasn't stopped me from trying out new levels of tacky in other venues, like my nails. These was supposedly leopard print, but I think that the turquoise is overwhelming the pink & red. Since, you know, in the photo it basically looks like there is just pink and turquoise. Perhaps I should have chosen at least one neutral color.