So I lost my job. Well. I was informed yesterday morning that my department’s budget had been cut, and cut hard; and one of the items on the list affected my paycheck. I know without a shadow of a doubt that my friends and coworkers fought tooth and nail to keep me on board, so I’m not hurt – and I was planning to quit come September anyway, so it’s not really a big deal. I just don’t get a nice cushy little money buffer before school starts anymore.

On the up side, though, I get to have a very free (if frugal!) summer! So that’s good. I can go play anywhere my bike can take me (or, if the tide is right, drive my car out to Warm Beach and go fishing!). Oh, and if anyone has any odd jobs they need done? I can mural paint, house paint, weed gardens, prune trees and shrubs, push a lawn mower, drive a riding mower, design flyers, shovel bark/gravel/dirt/etc, do dishes, transcribe, balance a checkbook… shoot, at this point, I can even learn how to change a diaper. Shoot, I’m even up for helping with projects free of charge! But I won’t refuse any dead presidents that come my way…

I love seeing older people having fun. It makes me infinitely sad to see someone lose their sense of humor and fun in their later years, so when I do see seniors doing something just silly and spontaneous, it makes me infinitely happy. Here’s one example I just found on FARK.com: An older couple (married 62 years! woo!) playing an impromptu rendition of ‘Old Grey Bonnet’ at the Mayo Clinic. Congratulations, Fran and Marlo Cowan. I wanna be you guys when I grow up!

Our good friends Bridie and Robbie just welcomed their second boy into the world: Beau at 8:28AM this morning. Beau is about 9 pounds, and Bridie and Robbie are very happy. Welcome to the world Beau!

I love them. I do. But the age-old need to argue with anyone and everyone… wow. Yeah. Patton Oswald’s spoof pretty much covers that aspect of geekdom in its entirety… except that I hope not TOO many of us have this high of a WIS penalty. He must be what, like WIS 6? He’s verging on potted plant level, here; and I can tell you right now he didn’t dump those extra points into CHA. Pfeh. Level 2 Commoners.

So I’ve been largely off the blogdar for a while, almost exclusively due to the fact that the last desperate dregs of the school year were coming to a close. So. Much. Work. So. Little. Sleep. It didn’t help that I worried myself sick, or was relearning to walk (after my accident in February – which, I am walking now, btw!), or having to drive my car to the UW to park in my ridiculously expensive and even more ridiculously placed parking space. Half my paycheck also went to paying my valet/assistant, without whom the first two months of this quarter would have been impossible.

All that aside, I barely made it through the quarter, and am out the other side. Thank God. I was so ready to be done. All I wanted to do was clean and sew. The day after I got out of school, I cleaned the house and didn’t stop for three days. It was wonderful. I’ve also gotten my bike tuned up (thanks, Robert!), taken Boris on a lot of walks, almost played through two new videogames, dyed my hair black/blue, found a cool Survivalist/Green living audioblog, and lost 10 lbs of the weight I gained while I was injured and couchbound. Oh, and I’m 3/4 of the way through making the world’s ugliest teddy bear. All in all? A pretty good two weeks off school. Oh, and I’m on vacation from work, too, since I’m an 11-month employee, and we save my month off for the summertime.

So that’s where I’ve been. I’ll try to get some posting in between developing freckles and riding my bike, but you know how it can be.