Barn kitty! (Aww…) Taken at my parents’ farm.

So I’ve been at this new job for a month now with 2 months left on the contract. It hasn’t been exactly what I expected, but hopefully things will change soon.

The commute is killing me. I am SO tired all the time, as I’ve been getting up at 6AM every day so I can get there by 7:45 (2 buses) and leaving at 3:45 so I can get home at 5:30 and spend a decent amount of time with Jules in the evening. This is the worst part about having a job on the east side of the lake. (Though, I am happy to make that commute for absolutely free courtesy of Microsoft.) :(

In other news, we are just about recovered from our recent trip to Wisconsin. Jules’ parents came to stay with us for a few weeks, and all of us took a 4-day trip to Wisconsin to visit my family. My family planned out our time very specifically so we only had one lunch hour and one evening to visit friends. Jules and I drove up to De Pere to see Peter, Melissa and Ben for one evening, but my cold was absolutely terrible at that point so we had to go home so I could rest. (I caught a particularly nasty cold at PAX which held on for about 3 weeks, but that was much better than the attendees who went home with swine flu.) It was nice to see everyone again, but there were so many people we missed out on since we were only there such a short time.

Nathaniel is about 2 weeks from closing on his house purchase, so he will be moving soon. It is very exciting for him and us as he is wanting his own space and we are now to a point where we can financially afford to pay the mortgage without help. He’s already got some renters lined up so he will be on the other end of that same deal now. I feel pretty excited about the prospect of finally having a studio!

Otherwise, I started exercising again. It’s been a long time, and I really need it. I pulled out the Gazelle and just gave up the idea of having a clear walkway in the basement, at least for now. When Nat moves out I will be able to put it where we currently have a futon so that won’t be an issue, but for now it kind of sucks. Trying very hard to make a habit of it in the evenings when I get home from work, but it’s so hard when I’m so exhausted. I have even stopped pulling the Kindle out on the bus rides because I just fall asleep right away.

We’ve been playing Beatles Rock Band and Rock Band 2 quite a bit recently, and Jules has been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum while I’ve been crocheting. I started making a hexagon-centered pattern based on the game board for Settlers of Catan. I promised myself this time I will not start sewing the pieces together before they are all finished so I can properly block them. So far, so good.

Yesterday Jules went in to get his fingerprints taken for his new Green Card. Hopefully that will be the last time we have to deal with the USCIS for a long time. As usual, we have no idea what the next step is, other than to wait. I’m getting sick of sending them money and paperwork.

I’m pretty shocked that we’ve been in our house nearly a year already. I was just rereading some of the entries from this time last year and am just astounded by how quickly that time went by. I seriously still feel like we just got back from the UK, when in actual fact that was just last Christmas. Time is just disappearing so quickly these days. I sure hope that this coming year slows down a little. We don’t have anything major planned between now and the holidays so that should help. Frankly, I just feel pooped from all of it! It took a long time but I actually got a bit tired of house maintenance round about the time I lost my job (June-ish.) Now I just feel like relaxing.

I seem to always mention finances when I write posts, but it’s something that’s constantly on my mind. I feel I need to get it out before I go nuts. So yes, I’ll do it once again. To be honest, getting laid off didn’t help us out that much in that department. Shocking, I know. Looking at our financial data I noticed there was a pretty big positive spike in “Income vs Spending” in the month I got laid off since they gave me a settlement, but after that we’ve been in the red as we are working really hard to recover. 2 months is definitely enough time for things to destabilize. In our case, the amount we’ve been in the red in that category since then has gone down a bit each month to the point where this month we will probably break even, and then we can begin to turn things around. I recently financed a new laptop for my freelancing business so I can actually do client work (my 5-year-old Powerbook was just not cutting it anymore, unfortunately, despite how much I wanted it to) so that is some debt I hadn’t planned for but now have looming over me. Additionally, we had some unexpected vet bills this past month which added onto that ugly total. I don’t feel like I’ve been especially stupid with our money as I’ve definitely been investing in things that we need, but I do feel depressed that we haven’t been able to get rid of the debt faster. We have no plans to do anything more with the house in the coming days and we aren’t planning on traveling at all, so we will definitely have an opportunity to keep on attacking it, but I still don’t feel like I will be able to completely relax until it is all gone. Looking over my notebook I have noticed that I have been planning on having 80% of the “current” debt gone by “this time next month” since about April. That’s how close we have been all this time, until the layoff, which set us back another 2 months. Gah, it is SO frustrating for me. I know it will be gone soon, because I am making sure of it, but I still feel like a failure for letting it get as bad as it is at the moment.

Things aren’t all bad though. We still have things so much better than so many other people right now. Whenever I feel the need to complain, I just think about Bill, who often twitters about the small annoyances in his life with the tag “#FirstWorldProblem”. Life is still good, even when it’s not 100% peachy.