A slightly disjointed holiday update
Jan. 1st, 2010 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseAs you might guess, our Christmas celebration was a necessarily quiet affair, partially due to a lack of social connections and partially due to most of our spare cash going towards moving debts. That said, it was still perfectly enjoyable and surprisingly bountiful besides. Thanks to the aforementioned debts, we weren't able to buy gifts for our friends this year, but we found a lovely set of holiday cards that we enjoyed sending out instead, and received a number of nifty ones in return (as well as some packages from a particularly stubbornly generous friend). Brian and I did give each other a few books, shameless bibliophiles that we are (amusingly, the one furnishing our house remains short of is adequate shelving). My mother, who finally retired from being an Alaskan attorney and moved to Florida last month, paid more than half of the cost of shipping a bunch of her furniture down here, including her beautiful granite-topped oak table and chairs, her gigantic Christmas tree and the ornament collection we amassed while my brother and I were growing up, a garden bench for our patio, and all kinds of miscellaneous bits and bobs. On the whole, I ended up with quite a few of the things I was hoping for this year - a nearly-completely-furnished house (courtesy of my mother and Craigslist), a tree so big we had to bend the top over to fit it in our living room (thanks to my mother), lots of books (thanks to Brian and an elf off of my friendslist), the last volume of Absolute Sandman for my collection (thanks to the aforementioned stubbornly generous friend), some cosmetics and bath things from the Body Shop (thanks to Santa), and a wonderful turkey dinner (thanks to Brian again). Plus we went to see Sherlock Holmes, which was a remarkably fun movie - a nice amount of well-scripted action balanced with a surprising amount of cerebral problem-solving. Purists probably won't like it much, but as a thinking-person's action entertainment, it succeeded quite well.
New Years' was spent having pizza and surprisingly good wings - the local delivery place has a "golden tangy" sauce that's really quite delicious. Adam got back in town just in time for us all to watch the clock tick over, eat mince pie and pull some poppers before watching some Robot Chicken and a silly hacker movie from the 90's. And Brian had his one night of the year on which to get tipsy on champagne, slightly freaking out Adam in the process.
Job search is ongoing. The interview at the newspaper went remarkably well - the woman was impressed with me in general, but she'd already filled the position. Still, she thought I'd fit in at the office well and knew of an opening in sales, so she was going to have the advertising manager give me a call when he has a moment (sometime in the next week or two, most likely). Nothing else super-promising has been coming up, so I guess we'll see. I think I'd be good at it too, and hey - commissions!
Much as I've been enjoying quiet unemployment, I think I'm ready to go back to work - now that the moving-in is all pretty much over with, I'm feeling restless during the day. Plus, while I know we're lucky to be able to live comfortably and still pay things off on Brian's salary, an additional income would help immensely in getting us debt-free again. And it'd be nice to have some spare cash between paychecks for splurges like wine dinners and shows and things. But in the meantime, we have a nice warm house with nice comfy furniture and lots of books and nice cuddly kitties, which is pretty hard to complain about. So I'm not going to worry about money, I think. Maybe that'll be my New Years' Resolution - less consumerism, more materialism. Stop wishing I could buy more things and start focusing on enjoying the things I already have. Seems like a pretty good philosophy to me.
New Years' was spent having pizza and surprisingly good wings - the local delivery place has a "golden tangy" sauce that's really quite delicious. Adam got back in town just in time for us all to watch the clock tick over, eat mince pie and pull some poppers before watching some Robot Chicken and a silly hacker movie from the 90's. And Brian had his one night of the year on which to get tipsy on champagne, slightly freaking out Adam in the process.
Job search is ongoing. The interview at the newspaper went remarkably well - the woman was impressed with me in general, but she'd already filled the position. Still, she thought I'd fit in at the office well and knew of an opening in sales, so she was going to have the advertising manager give me a call when he has a moment (sometime in the next week or two, most likely). Nothing else super-promising has been coming up, so I guess we'll see. I think I'd be good at it too, and hey - commissions!
Much as I've been enjoying quiet unemployment, I think I'm ready to go back to work - now that the moving-in is all pretty much over with, I'm feeling restless during the day. Plus, while I know we're lucky to be able to live comfortably and still pay things off on Brian's salary, an additional income would help immensely in getting us debt-free again. And it'd be nice to have some spare cash between paychecks for splurges like wine dinners and shows and things. But in the meantime, we have a nice warm house with nice comfy furniture and lots of books and nice cuddly kitties, which is pretty hard to complain about. So I'm not going to worry about money, I think. Maybe that'll be my New Years' Resolution - less consumerism, more materialism. Stop wishing I could buy more things and start focusing on enjoying the things I already have. Seems like a pretty good philosophy to me.
