3:43 p.m. - 2004-05-06
Life is Looking Good
I refuse to apologize for the lag in updating simply because I believe that going out of town for ten days and only having email access in scary small town motels seems like a perfectly legitimate reason to me. Choir tour is over and done with for another year, and for me, for the last time. While it feels a little weird to know that I'm not going back, I am 100% confident that this was the right year to choose. Last year, I didn't want to leave. I wanted a year of no responsibilities, and I had that year. And it was a great one - the combination of everything that happened in choir this year made me very glad to be back but still satisfied with not going back next year.
So six years of my life later, I am officially an alumni. And I'm ok with that. I will be a groupie, I'm sure - a result of being engaged to the assistant conductor - and I'm looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday mornings again.
Or at least, on the Saturday mornings when I'm not working. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I am in possession of a permanent library job. It's not full time, unfortunately, but it is more hours than I'm getting right now and has the distinct advantage of not being only weekends, which in my eyes is a gigantic improvement. I'll be working at one of the smaller branches, and I start on the 31st of May. I am entirely delighted by this development, and I'm also bound and determined that before the year is out, I will make some kind of income from writing. Even if it's a ten dollar honorarium. I have a job that pays me well enough for me to scrape by on part time hours - I have no excuse.
It pays me just well enough that looking at my budget, I should be able to move out as of August 1st, as Diana and I have been planning on. This now hinges on her employment situation, but she's so delightful that I'm confident she'll find a job. We haven't started looking for a place yet, but I'm looking forward to scoping out the various parts of the city with her. Tour just confirmed how awesome it will be to live with her, so now I'm looking forward to moving out even more, especially now that I have a long term source of income doing something I actually enjoy.
Possibly the best part about not working only weekends any more is that my schedule will no longer be exactly opposite the Raisin's. Because there are two weeks in between finishing here and starting the new library job, I'm hoping to be able to squeeze in a visit. I'm crossing my fingers that it will last more than 24 hours, because the last time I saw her for longer than a day at a time was for her wedding, I think. This will not do, and we've firmly resolved to see more of each other this summer. Conveniently, there is a delightful beach halfway between our cities, and our plan is to meet there a few times over the course of the summer. Also convenient is the fact that my sister's new boyfriend lives in Calgary, so I can carpool with my sister and the Raisin can carpool with the boyfriend when we're visiting each other, which makes it a much more financially viable option for us.
This job also means that Disneyland is officially a go for next May. After much negotiating and discussing, we've decided that if we can manage to save $100 a month each, we should have enough to get ourselves there, stay in a relatively cheap motel, not die of scurvy, and go to Disneyland. I cannot even begin to tell you how much joy this fills me with, and at the moment, 2005 is shaping up to be the best year of my entire life. Living with my hilarious friend, going to Disneyland with my fabulous best friend, moving in with my delightful fiance, getting married, going to Hawaii on a honeymoon with my delightful husband, and working at a job doing something I actually really like to do.
It doesn't get much better than that, folks. So in order to facilitate both the moving out and the going to Disneyland, it's a frugal life for me for the next little while. Fortunately, I've lined up a lot of inexpensive entertainment for the next few weeks, so I'm hoping to be able to stash away the pennies and not have to mooch off Jamie to get to Disneyland. (I'm sure he's hoping for that too.) If all else fails, my tax return next year ought to be enough, but there are other things that money could be used for, and I'd like to actually save up enough to go on my own steam.
If you see me on a regular basis, please make sure to kick my ass about writing more. If you don't see me, please send me email reminding me that I could be writing something, whether it's a journal entry or an article or whatever. With my job situation temporarily under control, and my living situation not changing for the next couple of months, and well over a year till the wedding with things well in hand, I have no excuse not to be spending my abundant free time writing. So hop to it, self. No more excuses. (Well, there are some knitting projects that need some work. But that's another entry.)
