A few of you have requested that I explain my job description. Very quickly, as of yet, I am in charge of the termly newsletter: compiling material, the layout, and "liason" with the printer. I will also be assisting with the annual School magazine and the School website. I sit in the reception area so from time to time I'll be helping take calls and assisting people who visit the School. As time goes on, I expect to be given more projects in the way of Desktop Publishing, as my official title is Desktop Publishing Assistant. (Hopefully, in the future I'll be taking on the magazine, or at least the publishing aspect if not the gathering of materials.) So far, so good.

I wake up at 5-5:15am, catch the 6:31 train to Glasgow Central, quickly run downstairs to the Lower Level to catch the 7:25 train to Partick, and from Partick change over to the 7:38 train to Dalmuir, alighting at Jordanhill. I then walk ten minutes to the school, arriving around ten to 8. By 8:00 I've been awake 3 hours (if you don't count all the head nodding on the trains). Then I work until 4:30 and repeat the whole process in reverse, arriving home around 6:15 if I'm lucky enough to catch all the appropriate trains. This is what I call my 13 hour work day. Bedtime comes about three hours later.

The other receptionist and I are discussing the joys of food between America and Scotland--the stuff we love here that you can't get there and vice versa. Her son loves Apple Jacks so I'm gonna try to remember to bring some back with me after my visit this summer.

My birthday is a week tomorrow. Hip hip hurray! I've always loved birthdays. Some say that one age feels the same as the next, but I've never felt that. Oh how old I suddenly felt when I turned from 7 to 8. And from 9 to 10, I remember swinging on our old swingset and thinking how in just a few short (long really) days I'd be two digits! 12 to 13, finally being a real teenager; I remember walking down from the little shop up the road with my friend Amber and at 10:30 on the dot, I felt incredibly teen. 14 felt so much older than 13, and 16 after 15 meant more than just a driver's license. Turning 18 meant I was no longer 17 (and thus much more datable) and 19 meant I wasn't just barely legal. 20 marked the end of my teens and 21 marked full legality. Yet 22 meant I wasn't just barely legal once again and now 23 shows that I made it through 22, the cursed year where most look at their lives and think they've been nowhere. 23 sounds old enough to be, it sounds perfectly satisfactory, but around January next year I'll be thinking how boring and young 23 is and I'll be pleased to see 24. I wonder at what age this will end for me; however, I hope I'll always be pleased to see birthdays no matter how old the marker.

So happy birthday to me,
happy birthday to me,
happy birthday dear Lori,
happy birthday to me.