Better

A quick update on my situation due to this horrendous hour of the morning alongside the need to announce things are better than my last post.

My last day at the ice cream store is this afternoon. I was hired at the job my roommate recommended and am certain it will yield a friendlier schedule. I will be one of those annoying people tourists find at the city attractions who corral them into group photos and try to sell a photo package after their tour. It's higher pay than the ice cream store and it's in the downtown area, so I can access school either before or after work, which will allow me more time to work on my projects and less time on the transit. Whew!

My professors have been amazing during these first few weeks of the quarter. I have kept them informed of the strains work has put on my study time and they've given me more breaks than I could have asked for. I will most certainly be able to pull through now that this new job is underway. I am very excited about finally being on track.

I've organized my room a bit differently, setting up the milk crates in a bookshelf fashion. Even that improved the look of the room. Yesterday my awesome roommates and I had a roommate pow wow, which involved installing screens in our windows and discussions about sharing the fridge, pantry shelves, and cleaning duties. How wonderful to have a screen in my window, allowing me to let fresh air in minus the bugs. Before this luxury, I was running a small fan during the night for airflow which did the trick but also neutralized the beep from my alarm in the morning. It was always a crap shoot as to if I'd hear it.

I do not know for sure when I can bring my stuff here from the storage garage in Toledo, but I've set a goal to figure out how to do it before mid-September. I have quite a few things aside from my own furniture that would be great to have here. My roommates are looking forward to my working vacuum cleaner, for instance. :)

I have set down my knitting for now and taken up reading books on the transit. This is a nice little change and I've been wanting to find time to read non-school books. A friend from Toledo visited a couple weeks ago and we stopped into a used book store where we found two copies of Tess of the d'Ubervilles. Neither of us have read this novel but have wanted to (knowing it's not a happy tale), so we both bought a copy and vowed to discuss our individual progress. We are a miniature book club.

Also, I have remembered my daily prayers. This has been missing, and I know from past experiences that when things get rough, I usually find this corresponding with lack of prayer. Not that prayer keeps the bad days away, but it certainly makes them more tolerable and solutions more visible. I believe my renewed commitment is helping.

I feel balance is near. Maybe one day I can have a little thing called free time and phone a friend for dinner.