On My Own

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, to my first post from my new apartment and also (perhaps most excitingly) from my new computer!!!! Yes, I finally have my very own computer, loyal readers. But first, an update, since you haven't heard from me since July... unless you went out to coffee with me yesterday or something. Anyway, the amazing Brinicio and I have vacated our wonderful house as of September 31st and she has returned to the Valley of the Willamette while I have transferred not all of my belongings into a beautiful little studio apartment above some friends' garage which sits on a hill overlooking the Valley of the Rogue. Among the items that actually made it here rather than being consigned to a storage unit (another first for me, personal storage unit renting), are three almost completely full bookshelves, six plants, and a new fuzzy, purple baby plant from the home of Troy and Bryan, may they not kill one another for another day. This is my first time completely On My Own, and while I still haven't adjusted completely (I'm still waking up in the middle of the night for no good reason), I am on the second floor and there's only one door, so my paranoid imaginings of people coming through the window are now easily pushed aside.

On to the computer. As some of you may or may not know, when I left the employ of the The Crazed Screaming Boss, she refused to take back the computer she had "gifted" me with. When I later learned that she was informing people that she had bought me off with it, you can imagine that I reacted negatively ("She WHAT?!!!? I will never use that computer!!!!"). That reaction lasted a little over a year, until Bri moved out, taking my last connection with the outside world with her. I spoke with my wonderful, brilliant, generous and kind cousin Bryan, who wound up tricking out my cyber-ride, and I now have a pretty lean, mean surfing machine with two (two) hard drives, a wireless modem, a CD-Rom drive and a DVD drive, both of which are CD-RWs, and various other little things. A huge round of applause and thanks to Bry for enduring allergy attacks to clean out the accumulated ick (apparently no one had ever thought to clean this unit) figuring out all the glitches, putting in all the new bits and who knows what else!!

Final big change: I'm back at the lumber yard. Business is slowing down everywhere and I knew there was no way my previous employer could keep me going at 40 hours a week much longer, and there was no way they would be able to give me a pay raise to compensate at all. Add to this the email incident with my boss (I never did tell her that I was this close to walking out) and the nightmare that was the County Fair last year, and I decided that Becky's offer of a $2 pay increase and Campmeeting was probably worth the obnoxious men. Although the hours are probably going to drop this winter at the lumber yard as well, at least I know that my managers will be much more willing to work on a flexible schedule with me if I decide to pick up part-time seasonal work elsewhere (Bear Creek). So, yeah, while there are some things I miss about the old office (some of the co-workers, the lack of cursing, getting to dress up a little), I think I've made the right decision. Anyway, I just wanted to catch everyone up on what's going on, and hopefully my next post will be shorter. And it will definitely involve the weather. Just a warning.