Conversation Starter

so yeah... I wake up this morning and decide to get dressed (something I've become accustumed to ---go figure) anyway I just happen to grab a t-shirt w/o really paying much attention to which one and it happened to be our old bar crawl shirt "CBD in the CBD" Anyway I've worn this shirt aroud plenty and no big deal... but today it was like a magnet. Something like 5 different people asked me what it stood for. Man, I didn't realize before how tough that is to explain to other people... especially some people that don't even know where Iowa is:

"weellll... see, UI URP stands for the University of Iowa which is where I went to school... no that's ohio... yeah with the corn... no thats idaho... anyway... and the URP bit is the graduate program I was in -- Urban and Regional Planning... no 'Urban and Regional'... yeah planning... like cities and stuff... like transportation planning... well no, not exactly... um, yeah close enough i guess... anyway see we had this bar crawl... that's where you get a bunch of people and you go to lots of different bars in one night and get really drunk... what do you call it down here? ... huh, that's funny... anyway we had one of those and, CBD well, it' this planning term for central business district... basically means downtown... yeah and see planners have to use a lot of acronyms for things, so we thought it'd be funny to make the... yeah i know, right? ... anyway and the other cbd, this first one stands for something else though... um... well i'm not sure, we never really reached a consensus on that... we had lots of funny ideas... pretty much whatever you wanted it to mean... no that was sort of the point... we tried to have a different answer everytime... no i guess it doesn't make a lot of sense... but... well we drank a lot."

And that's about how most of my day went. And I knew only you guys would get it.

Hey! Does anyone remember the username and password for the UIURP alumni site??? I thought I knew it... but apparantly only half of it. They probably wouldn't be happy if we just posted it online... but if anyone knows it, could you shoot me an email? (mylastname.myfirstname@gmail.com or myfirstinitialmylastname@nctcog.org) THANKS a TON! - kristen

New Job

Well, I have officially changed jobs. I am now a planner for the City of Chesterfield. I left my previous employment in order to get some more free time and working for a government agency is nice. Previously I was working 45 hours on a slow week and in the upper 50's on a busy week. It didn't take long after Logan was born for me to decide to try and find another job. For the first two months of Logan's life I only saw him sleeping and when he woke up in the middle of the night to eat. While my new job is a bit more mundane, I really enjoy leaving at 5:00 everynight (unless of course there is a night meeting which is only 3-4 times per month). While I miss the projects I was working on, I love having less stress and free time. Other than that, life is the same in St. Louis.