This blog is closed...

Until further notice.
To the few, the proud, the faithful readership, I offer my humble thanks for your interest and commentary. I also offer my sincere apologies for the circumstances beyond my control that have led me to postpone this particular imram until a later date in time. Rest assured, if/when the time comes, I will resurrect this blog- provided I remember my username/password.
Again, thank you all for your interest, commentary and support. Please keep me in your prayers from here on out, too.
I hate goodbyes, and closing this blog 'until further notice' is probably a euphemistic way of saying 'forever' and it's a goodbye. (Why yes, I am a melancholic... however did you guess?)I feel like there are more things I should say, about dealing with disappointments like this, and tying it all in a proper imram metaphor. But I'm tired, discouraged and feeling unaccountably lonely at present.
So I'll wrap this up, in proper paradoxical fashion.
Hallo/Viszlat.

Blogspot ate my nifty title.... and nearly ate this post.

Apologies to my faithful readership (all five or so of you)! I hadn't forgotten about this blog, but it kept not being a priority to update. I want to get back into regular updates, but realistically I don't know if that's going to happen. Still, I can update now so I will.
So... A lot has happened. A lot. It's been almost a month. Wow. So, I will do my best to fill in the details of what has been going on for this almost a month.
At the beginning of this month, my dad offered to pay for me to attend an LI school, Foreign Service Opportunities. As you all may remember, I was between housing situations in FR. Nothing worked out. Nothing... The Daleys were very generous, and I will forever be grateful for them for taking me in on short notice and with so little extra space. But I knew I couldn't stay there for longer than two weeks and there was nothing else opening as another possible opportunity for a place to live. So, I went to the LI school more or less homeless, but oddly okay with it. Sort of detached. It was weird.
So I got there the night before it started, all dressed up and put-together looking, and met my classmates. They were a nice enough bunch. I also found a nearby pub that has cider (yay!), so if anyone's ever in Clarendon and needs a recommendation, I can tell you where it is!;)
We started classes the next day and I had a revelation. I was typing, but I couldn't keep up with the speaker's pace. I couldn't seem to make my fingers work fast enough and when I was fast, I wasn't accurate. My brain didn't seem to be working properly either. I tell you guys, I seriously felt like it was rusty from disuse! As you might imagine, that was kind of frightening. After about three hours of this weird panicky 'why isn't my brain working' feeling, I finally hit my stride and was back up to normal speed and skill. But that lack had made a definite impression. It was disuse.
And over the next two days, I realised I couldn't go back to working at Subway, even if I did somehow find housing- which didn't seem too likely!
I have skills, I have training, I have a degree. I _have_ to do something more with my life.
That's what I was thinking.
So, I talked with my dad and we made arrangements for me to come home on the Sunday after the LI school. It wasn't an easy decision, and it some ways it didn't feel like a decision I'd made freely, but I really didn't have anywhere else to live, and I was feeling more and more strongly all the time that FR would be a dead-end for me. I needed to be somewhere else.
(Btw, I still _want_ to be going overseas ASAP...)
So I came home. And I was home for exactly two days before I decided to go and visit Coriel, Chigger and family. I got a warm welcome, and really enjoyed my stay there, it was so good to talk to Coriel and Chigger. All three of us must have remakred about a dozen times on the awesomeness of being able to visit without a paper hanging heavy over our heads! Coriel and I also watched a lot of Psych and the entire series of Firefly, which was interesting.

The ride back from Coriel and Chigger's was the most interesting part, unfortunately. I was supposed to meet my dad at a pub, and while I managed to do that part right, in his haste for us to leave, I forgot my cellphone. Though I called the place the next day and offered a reward for the safe return of my cellphone- even minus minutes etc, no luck. So, alas, my old phone number is gone. I have a new one now, which I will spread via FB and emails at a later date and time- probably tomorrow. So, it was a long and traumatic process to get a new phone number, I only just managed to finish putting that all together today. So, faithful readership. Please email or FB me your phone numbers and I'll get back to you with mine ASAP.

There is more to update/catch up on/backpost about, but I have been sitting here at Panera for about three hours, job searching, emailing people about jobs, and posting info about the yard sale I have to organise for tomorrow. While _very_ slowly drinking my chai latte. Very slowly. Hopefully I will be able to post tomorrow, with the rest of the update and the results of the yard sale... We'll see how it goes.
All the best to all my readers!

Insert transition...

But life isn't as simple as editing music videos. If nothing else in this whole experience, I've learned that nowhere on earth is home. You will always have to pick up and go- it's just a matter of how much junk you have to take with you, who you're leaving and who you're going to. It's not even the where, but the who... >sigh<
I will have fond memories of this past month spent here. I just felt like I was getting used to things and here I go again. I knew it when I signed up for it. But it's still a little jarring. I moved my futon and most of my stuff today. All I have left to pack are two bags and that's it. I also found a place I might live at- if I can pick up that second job. I need to call the agency ASAP. I don't want to, but I need to. I need those hours and that kind of money. I'm working tomorrow- I wasn't scheduled to, but they were desperate so it's 9-2 for me. Five hours. Then vespers around 6, meaning leaving here around 4.30... And Byzantine, so we'll be standing the whole time. And so forth and so on.
J-chan, in reference to your early comment/question, LI= Leadership Institute. They're running an FSO school Mon/Tues and I'm going to it... I dunno why in some respects. I mean, I'll probably get posted to some godforsaken place like Ghana... yurgh...
"But it'll be with a group!"
Yay....
I dunno. The only thing I could think of today at work is how overqualified I am for my current job. Where do some of my fellow graduates get their jobs from? The Heavenly Employment/Job Opportunities Center? NO. I know everyone makes their own opportunity. Not to say you don't thank God when you get it, but you work like it all depends on you and pray like it all depends on God.
I just don't want to come to Judgement Day and be asked to give a reckoning of time/talents wasted.
I'm soo tired.
I prayed for you all tonight at my holy hour- I prayed for my readership and for everyone who has prayed for me during this past month and a half of transit/strangeness/insanity.

I did it...

I dyed my hair tonight, with the gracious help of SuprNico, who proved to be even more Supr than usual in her assistance! She did a great job- I think. It's kind of hard to tell now while my hair's still a bit damp what it's going to do. And it wasn't her fault that we forgot to use the conditioner. So now my hair is a frizz-ball of blackish-reddish hue. Further updates as this situation develops.
Picked up a housing app. I have to be able to pay at least $600 a month. That's not happening. It just isn't. Don't know what I'm going to do now...
Tomorrow I move my futon into the Daleys' flat, as well as whatever other heavy items of my stuff I don't want to deal with on Saturday can be moved.
I'm tired. I don't want to move anything right now. I worked three hours OT today. Wish I was being paid time and a half for that, but oh well.
Sleep now.
Keep the prayers coming!

Closing

Working 'til closing at Subway really means working until everything is done. Thankfully it looks like I'm getting a permanent schedule change to daytime shift. I guess I'll miss some of the quirks of the nightcrew, but overall, I appreciate being able to walk to/from work during daylight hours. So the big crunch time is this weekend, what with moving somewhere and trying to work the schedule such that I can get to an LI school (FSO school). My dad is willing to pay for this. But not for a TEFL course. I see there is an issue of priority here...
Anyway...
I'm tired, I'm bitter, and I'm itinerant. I'm also a complainer. I just have to keep focusing on the fact that this is an imram. No one said it would be easy or comfortable, or fun. Just not boring. Ever.
Prayers please!

Just a short post...

basically just making a 'post of the day' sort of thing. I didn't work today because I thought I'd be starting night shift on the second job. That didn't actually end up working out. I called them and they said they need people on a day-by-day/case-by-case sort of basis. So I gave up a work day and traded a Friday for basically no reason whatsoever. And I can almost guarantee they'll want me to work tomorrow when I'm scheduled to work to close. Well they can stuff it. I don't care if they are paying $10/hr, if they won't start me soon or with a _consistent_ schedule, that's it.
I have a pounding headache. I called home today. That didn't go very well, but I got a chance to talk to my dad for the longest amount of time I've talked _just_ to him since graduation.
My head really hurts. I hope it's just dehydration.
I still need somewhere to live.

Anchor

So I had a Holy Hour today. It was nicer than usual, because the lady who shares it with me left about twenty minutes early and I had a private chat with Himself. And I thanked Him. I thanked Him for the experience as a whole, because obviously it means I'm supposed to learn something from it. I thanked Him for helping me keep on my pathetic little imrama-bound raft. I reiterated that if He didn't want me doing something, He was to stop me- otherwise I would proceed to the best of my ability. And that's what I'm doing.
Then I thought about anchors. One of Mary's titles is Anchor of Confidence. I didn't know that before today, but it's interesting. And as a melancholic temperament, the virtue I need to cultivate the most carefully, I think, is hope. So I'm trying to keep that in mind, even as I wonder where I'm going to live in five days...
Working the second shift at Subway tonight was an eye-opening experience. I learned that the night-shift manager is not exactly by the books, but she does seem very nice. She gave me some info about places in town that might be able to help me out- apparently Salvation Army helps with finding a place to live and there is some government sponsored housing where your rent payment is based on your income... We'll see how that goes. Hopefully something will work out with one of the families I want to live with.
And I still haven't called MG to tell her that I don't want to go to PA.
And I'm really, really tired.
Expect the posting schedule to change significantly as my schedule does likewise. And if after the 28th, I drop off the face of the earth briefly, say a little prayer- my raft may be in the middle of two large waves... What's that bit called again? A trough? Whatever. I'm really, really tired...