Smells Like Snow

Big changes are happening in this gal's world, and these changes availed themselves just around the same time I was remembering a statement my friend Chuck made 10 years ago:
"When you are 30, you know who YOU are and who your FRIENDS are. It is a calmer time in life."

Oh really? I said then.
And Oh Really? I say now.

That statement bears some weight of course - the chaos of dating and social manipulation is far behind me now, but friends are still a fickle subject for the most part. My friendships are not as tumultuous and devious as they once were - actually, I have some wonderful constant companions that have grown or are growing with me. My friend Rachel dubbed me her Mr. Snuffalupagus....for no one (in her circle) believes that Meghan really exists. The social monkey. I can call, write, send pictures, but ask me to go out anywhere and I start falling asleep at the thought of it! I never thought that I would develop into this anti-social dragon...its just that the wells of energy I used to draw upon to get me through a pre-Bean hungover day or through another term paper have run totally DRY. I gotta conserve, babies. I just saw the Al Gore movie...now isn't that telling you something? How far behind funkified is my pop-culture exposure?

Recently, Hopkins' SPSBE program was slashed and basically burned, leaving me and the other hordes of students in the program scurrying for academic direction. Quickly discovering that if we didn't get every possible person we knew in the University to write a letter to save our collective educational goals, we were going to be FUCKED and attending the Univ. of Baltimore. Of course, I conjured up my father and launched a royal Devine stink and got my ass grandfathered into the Business Program in the Carey Business School. Yeah - you read that correctly. A BUSINESS major...its hard to type I am laughing so hard. But you might know, I really didn't have direction or a major before, so I am living with this for the time being. Considering I have had two businesses at this point in my life, it might be good to learn something about the foundations...maybe I might keep one up and running if I swallow some of the good ol' Hopkins know-how, yo.

Then, I decided When in Rome sort of and enrolled full-time, going part time at my Hopkins job.

Then I received a phone call about a publishing job that I applied for months ago.

THEN I interviewed.

THEN I got it.

So that leaves me where I am now - still heavily in school (although minus a class), and under the uncomfortable cloud of the two-week notice situation. In all fairness to the academia powers that be in the Epi Department, I have offered to literally work my ass off for the next two weeks in attempt to prepare the m for "life without Devine". However, there seems to be some "hurt feelings" or some crap going on, so the woman that I work with occasionally hasn't spoken to me since I announced my departure. (ASS.) I have reorganized my desktop numerous times, read through the majority of my readings for school, sent out pre-arranged online birthday cards for the next year and posted on this blog in the meantime. The other folks, previously main pains in the shahoos, are now my allies. Funny how that all works. The Boos seem to - *gasp* - LIKE me. Well, that is fucking new.

But despite the new love of the Boos, I am heading back into the career I never should have strayed from: Book Publishing. Marketing, no less, which happens to be a Devine specialty: Pulling miracles out of your shahoo and making literary magic.

It is going to be one hell of a ride, I think.
I can't wait.

The Integrity Issue

Noun
Singular: integrity
Pluraluncountable
integrity (uncountable)
Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
The state of being wholesome; unimpaired
The quality or condition of being complete; pure

[edit] Synonyms
honesty
uprightness
rectitude
unity
wholeness
purity
goodness
probity
sincerity
virtue
decency

Integrity is one of the most important and oft-cited of virtue terms. It is also perhaps the most puzzling. For example, while it is sometimes used virtually synonymously with ‘moral,’ we also at times distinguish acting morally from acting with integrity. Persons of integrity may in fact act immorally—though they would usually not know they are acting immorally. Thus one may acknowledge a person to have integrity even though that person may hold importantly mistaken moral views.

When used as a virtue term, ‘integrity’ refers to a quality of a person's character; however, there are other uses of the term. One may speak of the integrity of a wilderness region or an ecosystem, a computerized database, a defense system, a work of art, and so on. When it is applied to objects, integrity refers to the wholeness, intactness or purity of a thing—meanings that are sometimes carried over when it is applied to people. A wilderness region has integrity when it has not been corrupted by development or by the side-effects of development, when it remains intact as wilderness. A database maintains its integrity as long as it remains uncorrupted by error; a defense system as long as it is not breached. A musical work might be said to have integrity when its musical structure has a certain completeness that is not intruded upon by uncoordinated, unrelated musical ideas; that is, when it possesses a kind of musical wholeness, intactness and purity.
(from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/integrity/)