Thrihyrne

Had a wonderful experience on the bus yesterday morning from downtown out to work- before getting on the bus a young woman asked me to turn around so she could see the back of my hat; it's one that I knitted for myself using a free pattern from Ravelry that just happens to have been designed by someone I sang with in choir here before, a fellow soprano! Anyway, this woman was also a knitter and so we spent the bus ride until she disembarked talking about knitting (and sharing a couple of projects we were working on), her job, family, all kinds of good stuff. It made the ride quite enjoyable indeed. As for the commute, though, I really do not want to keep doing this beyond another month. I'm going to give Julia my notice once she returns from her trip to California.

I've agreed to take her to the airport at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning and then Jen will come down later in the day for us to have the New Year's holiday together. It will be so much fun for the two of us to have time together without the potential awkwardness of Julia being around with some of her expectations (which happened last time) that weren't articulated until after the fact. I'm getting the ball rolling with the work colleague who offered for me to be a roommate and getting some more information from her. Even if I'm there for a few months before finding something else, at least that will be a few months of not having this crazy commute, and not spending what I feel is more than my share for utilities and being in a house that frankly I can only enjoy 8 days out of the month now. As Jen has noted, this house and this situation is a part of my past, and now I'm in a new phase of living here in Portland with new work in a new part of the city. Time to get involved in that rather than straddling the two sections.

( yesterday's public transport adventures )

So I suppose the latest on the job front is that I still have the contingency employment to work at home; I just need to buy a Linksys modem and it has to be Linksys, not some other company. In the meantime, if I hear from the temp folks about work, I'll definitely take it; I can do that while I wait to be scheduled for at-home training in Voicecurve's software and all that good stuff. I think I will continue to apply for university jobs because if I can swing that, I'd really prefer that environment, and Voicecurve is at-will, so at any point I can say good bye. I need an official fully certified 'hello' first, but that will come, I trust.

I did some writing on my Gimli story on the train, and spent some time internally shaking my head at how marvelous it is that I am back here in a place where I can ride public transport all over the place. I'm back in a city! After the insular and limiting time in Harrisonburg, being here makes me a bit giddy at times. I'm not taking advantage of all that the city has to offer since I'm trying to keep my monetary outflow to as close to $0 as possible until I have an inflow, but all in time. The other thing that's really great is my relationship with Julia. I can really appreciate her for who she is in a way I didn't before; I'm in a very different place internally, plus I'm not writing obsessively nor spending all of my time online. We've had a couple of Scrabble dates (we both love to play) and we've even shared some dinners together, something I would never have done before. And the house is warmer thanks to her inset fireplace thingie. So I'm so much more content in this space, which makes a world of difference.