2 months and counting

Hello folks,

Well, yesterday marked the official anniversary of two months of me starting my new job and moving to the island. This morning I find myself sitting in a cafe. I used the community bus to get here this morning and enjoyed a nice chai and a breakfast wrap in this cozy spot that I have become quite find of. They have a bitchin' shaw hotspot here so internets is reliable and I like to come here sometimes to be around people without having to be at work.

This morning was bright and sunny and blue skies and cold and crispy. Living in a different climate is pretty weird and I find that I'm having trouble figuring out what time of year it is still. I'm not used to November being this... September-ish? Sometimes it strikes me that I'm here and other times it feels like the most normal thing in the world. And right now it's a little of both. I feel proud of myself, though. I never thought I'd be able to stick it out by myself like this and I have been doing okay for the most part. I am holding it together in a strange place with strange people and doing relatively okay at all the things I'm supposed to be doing. I've learned lots about myself and what I can stomach and what are the harder things that I wish I had M. to lean on for. I have no choice though, I just gotta get through it.

Sometimes I miss how little things were easy back in the old home. Like, getting groceries. Getting groceries was easy. You just hop in the truck and way you go. This time, though, I gotta do a ton of preplanning and figuring out how much I can haul from point A to point B, I gotta make sure I can carry it and it will fit in my bags, and I gotta make sure that whatever I buy I can cook at home in my little hovel of a kitchen with a hot plate and no oven. Le sigh. Woe is me, eh. Heh. I just spent a whole paragraph talking about my grocery routines. Yep.

I just downloaded a little blogging app for my iPad and it's much easier to write a blog post, so hopefully I'll get to blogging now more regularly. Using the browser on the iPad to access the web version is pretty awkward. Well, I think I better go motor over to the market and pick up some food for myself. Then I gotta stop at the sports store and see if I can find a fleecy jacket for myself before the bus comes at 10:30.

<3 A.

hello lovemuffins

Well, I'm here and I'm slowly getting settled in. I am now in week four of my new job and loving it so far. Sooo much to learn but I find I've been really enjoying wrapping my brains around how other libraries work and it's fun to draw comparisons between my old and new libraries. I am learning that there really isn't a right or wrong, or a good or bad... It's all just different.

I am bunking in at a rather cozy and large B&B on the island now, and got here on Monday. The owners are super nice and have been very kind, and above all, the place is really quiet. As I type this, though, some other B&B guests have just arrived and they are making quite a racket next door to me. Jesus, really, how hard could getting settled in a new room possibly be? It sounds like they're moving furniture next door. To top it off, one of the people staying in the room is really allergic to cats!! It's so sad. The B&B has a cat that I just learned about yesterday, named Charlie. He ran in the door when I got home from work last night and I was all concerned cuz I thought I was letting some strange stray kitty into their fancy lodge but nope, he actually belongs here, so that's good.

Now that I've got the blog pretty much mapped out to a useable template, I think I'm ready to rock to get posting on a regular basis now. I've been putting in a half hour of template building work during my lunch hour for the last few days using the computer at work, so that's helped. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out so far. I think I can work with this! Time to go to bed now.  Hopefully these folks next door shut the hell up when it gets close to 10. This A. needs her sleeps!

Hearts and stars,
A. <3 p="">

Day 2 on the Gabes

And yet more template changes. I'll get this sucker sorted eventually.

day 2 - no more *PL

Day 2 and I'm starting to feel a little more normal. It's kind of funny what I'm remembering in my head that I have to extract myself from. I just finished pouring through my work Facebook profile and updating who has admin privileges for groups, etc. Totally forgot to do that before I left. Lots of people have been asking me about how I feel about letting go of "my baby," or what I built at *PL over the last six or so years... I can honestly say I feel really good about it. It's in a great place and there's great people picking up the reins and I am excited to see where it goes from here. I think the part that's been the most difficult so far is how weird it is to no longer be involved. I'm having these weird instances of panic because it occurs to me that I'm supposed to be doing something... like writing someone back regarding a request or to answer a question, or that I'm behind on program planning. These are all things that I should be doing right now in early September but I'm not because it's not my job to do that anymore. Yep - that's the weirdest part.

Going through this whole process of changing from one job to another, from one library to another, from one community to a brand new community has really made me realize how important work is to me--for good or bad. Good, because it gives me purpose and direction and I find work satisfying, but bad because I can be very easily sucked in to having work be 100% of what I care about most, and that's a dangerous slope for me to be teetering along on. My work is important, but one of the reasons M. and I decided to take the leap and leave here is to re-evaluate our lives and what we were doing with them. Things weren't what we wanted and we weren't necessarily where we wanted to be, so we decided to make this gigantic change. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Well, we have another viewing this afternoon and I am excited about it. Time to go get some pants on and zip around the place putting things away and decluttering some more. Hugs and kisses.

A.

day 1 - no more *PL

I'm sitting here at the desk in our living room, the sun is pouring in on me and the cat is flaked out between the laptop and the window, soaking it up. It's day one of no more *PL and I still feel like I'm just on vacation, save for the fact that I just got off the phone with my amazing Aunt and Uncle who offered to put me up at their place while M. and I are in transition. I feel so relieved -- at least I'll have a place to land that's safe and stable.

Those of you that know me know that I don't do change easily. When I do manage it, I do change quick and I just go for it -- jump in with both feet and don't think about it. Library school was like that. I decided I wanted to go and then bam, I did it. This change has been quick, but it's been difficult because of the timelines with the living situation. The house hasn't sold yet... yeah yeah, it's only been 3 weeks, but I half expected it to be gone right now and we'd be packing up our crap and hauling the pets down to the Island. That's not how things are working out, and I am working on accepting it.

I am futzing with Wordpress today because I found a "flat" theme that I like. I am having trouble tackling stupid Wordpress, though, so we'll see how that works out.

Off to buy more "small" boxes from the H. Deeps.

Cheerio,
A.

template changes happy fun times

i've been doing a lot of pinteresting, trying to find a neat template to swap the blog over to and reinvent it. found a few templates i liked but i've decided to go ahead and muck with a template called eternal that i found. the designer was kind enough to make their template available online on the cheaps (free) and they also left the mad tip that there is an online free image editor like photoshop called pixlr. it's awesome. used it to make the banner image!

Hello world

Testy test test!