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People say “it’s been one of those days.” Lately I’m feeling like I’m having “one of those months”. And the worst part is, I don’t feel like I have any room to complain about it.

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It’s been a long time since I wrote in this blog. Many things have changed in the last couple years of my life. Most recently, a new job and (as of today) a new roommate.

My new job is working as a Technical Analyst/Web Developer at GuideStar. It’s been about 3-4 weeks since I started working there, and I love it. The office is great, the people I work with are great, and I’m really enjoying the work I’m doing. Best of all, I feel like I have a chance to make a difference in the company and in how things are done, and I like that. Plus I like being part of a team again, especially a team of people I consider my friends.

My new roommate is under a foot tall, black, furry, and enjoys being scratched behind his ears. Yesterday I finally made it over to the Heritage Humane Society. After spending a very long time being looked at by all the cats in the cat rooms, I was adopted by a 1 1/2 year old black cat named Charlie. Charlie came home with me this afternoon and is now warming one end of my couch. He’s a real sweetie.

And here he is.

I’m on a big important project at work that, as usual, has an insanely tight schedule and a deadline that approaches far too fast. So to stay ahead of the game, the project team has been working one day each weekend for the past several weeks. This weekend the designated day was Sunday.

Working a weekend day when one doesn’t normally work weekends tends to create what programmers might refer to as an “off by one” error. Since I had a day off on Saturday, followed by a working day on Sunday, Sunday felt like Monday. So odds are, my days of the week will be off by one for the rest of the week at least.

Helpfully, the universe seems to want to help with this.

I got in my car to go to work this morning, and turned on the radio.

“…it were a Sunday (whoa oh oh), ’cause that’s my fun day…”

[Eliza-brain]: Ooh, fun. Manic Monday. Bangles. It’s funnier when they play this on M… oh wait. That’s right, it *is* Monday. Heh.

This morning I woke up and looked outside and saw… snow! Two inches of snow on the ground. The ruler shows the proof. I grabbed my camera and took a bunch of pictures while it was still all gorgeous and white outside. Good thing too, since the snow is already starting to melt. Alas.

I wouldn’t mind it being winter year round if there was snow every day.

(Almost forgot… click the picture to go to my Flickr set for the rest of the photos.)

The Good:
My townhouse has furniture now. The movers came at quarter ’til 8am (gasp!) on Saturday morning to move things from the apartment to the townhouse. After which, I had some breakfast and then napped for about 3 and a half hours. Because, you know, watching people carry furniture is so exhausting… (I suspect it was actually the previous two weeks that were exhausting and it finally just caught up with me.)

The Bad:
My G5 is somewhat brain-dead at the moment. Saturday afternoon I ran Software Update on it. One of the updates said it had failed, and then it went into the normal post-update reboot. And then, it didn’t. It loaded to the progress bar screen, but hung there at 0 progress indefinitely. It will boot from CD or in single-user mode, but won’t boot normally. After several attempts to repair it with Disk Utility, fsck, and TechTool Deluxe, there seems to be no success. It did occur to me last night to see if it would boot into target-disk mode - that worked, which means I can at least access the drive to make sure I have all my files before I go to the last resort of an operating system reinstall. It sucks, but I suppose at least I’ll have a nice clean drive then.

The Stuffy:
To add to all the other fun, my head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton. Either a head cold, or it could be simply the maple trees pollenating (nothing like adding another allergen to the mix to make things interesting). In any case, I’m feeling rather bleh at the moment.

So that’s the latest news. Have a nice day.

In 4 days, I close on my new townhouse.

Over the last several months, there has been construction going on around the apartment complex I’ve been living in. They are replacing the exteriors on the buildings, siding, doors, windows, etc. I’ve been really worried about it because when they get to my building, I have to have all my belongings at least 3 feet away from the windows. My apartment is already packed solid, so I’m thinking “how do I do this?” I’ve been watching the costruction on the other buildings closely, and with my closing on the townhouse *so* close, I was sure it would work out so that they wouldn’t get to my building until after the closing, so I could move some things out to my new place and not have to worry so much.

The notice came Thursday night. The date is set. February 27th. I close on February 28th.

But here’s the thing… so what? After the initial moment of “ohmygodhowdoIdothis?!”, I took a deep breath and started moving stuff. And I’m fine with it. Yes, the timing sucks royally. Yes, I’m terrified that the workers are going to damage something important when they come in to work on stuff. Yes, it’s a complete pain in the butt. But I’m outta here starting in 4 days, and completely out of here within a month. So, eh, whatever.

That actually surprised me. I know with certainty that a couple years ago (even less) this would have totally stressed me out and panicked me. And now I’m completely of the “I’ve got bigger fish to fry” mindset. It gives me that much extra confidence that I’m making the right decisions in my life, and I’m growing and becoming a better, stronger person because of it.

So this post is to say ‘goodbye’ for today and ‘hello’ to tomorrow. I’ll see y’all in a few weeks from my brand new home.

This Valentine’s Day thought brought to you by xkcd

Due to the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response to my last post (thanks Kris!), I thought I’d do a more general update. After all, alot of life happens in 9-10 months.

My life has changed dramatically since last April. Without going into all the details (because, frankly, if you don’t already know at this point, it probably isn’t your business anyway), the end result is that I am out on my own for the first time in my life, and figuring out exactly what I want to make of it. I’ve been in my own apartment since last May, and it’s been a fantastic transition period to allow me to process all the changes and my thoughts and feelings about a whole range of things, past present and future. I see a counselor weekly, not because I’m crazy but because I’m not… sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier if I was seeing fluffy bunnies and butterflies everywhere, but nope, reality refuses to go away. I am frequently amazed at all the things I’ve learned that I am capable of. Most important, I’m learning to be happy with me, with the voice I hear inside, with who I truly am.

So what’s next? Well, the first what’s next is to get myself out of the tiny one-bedroom soggy apartment and into someplace I can make my own. To that end, I’m in the process of buying a townhouse. It’s a lovely place, recently remodeled inside, with all kinds of lovely features. The price is negotiated, the contract is signed, the home is inspected, minor things are agreed to be fixed, the mortgage is in the works at the bank… things are on track for me to be the owner of my very own home at the end of the month. I am more excited than words can describe.

I’ll post more as I get moved in and settled, but I can’t promise anything regularly scheduled right now. It’s hard to find time to write about life when you’re out living it.

Squish.

Squish is the sound it makes when you walk into your bathroom in the morning and your once dry and cozy socks immediately absorb the icy cold water of the miniature lake that has consumed the floor sometime during the night.

Squish is the sound I would like to make against the head of the next person that tells me that this repeated flooding of my bathroom is due to the drainage in the building backing up because (please choose as many as apply):
a) We’ve just had so much rain lately
b) Other people in the building flush things they shouldn’t
c) Other people in the building dump things down the drains that they shouldn’t
d) All of the above

Lifespan of my stay in this apartment: T minus about a month and a half.