Reminding myself of what’s important

It’s funny, I keep thinking of myself as this antisocial wallflower, despite three years in Colorado to the contrary. Final nail in that coffin: I was out to lunch with coworkers yesterday and ran into someone from the Raleigh synagogue who reminded me of my promise to read Torah soon and suggested three people I should hang out with, two of whom I already knew. Just a lovely encounter. As she walked away, my coworker said, “How is it that I’ve been here two months longer than you and you already have so many friends?”

I am so incredibly lucky to have Betsy and her family in my life, and even luckier that they’ve opened their home up to me in this beautiful way. I have made friends with three local rabbis and hope to make friends with a fourth tomorrow morning. My friend Jen from Sentinel fandom has proven to be even more awesome in real life than she is online. And that’s not to mention friends from synagogue and lovely coworkers and bosses. It’s such an embarassment of riches. And I’m already thinking of how I can get a futon couch so I can coax my friends from New York, Massachusetts, and Colorado to come down and see me.

I can’t believe it’s only week four! A quick status update: I am loving the new car, and I’ve already put 700 miles on it (only 200 of which can be credited to my getting lost–thank you, GPS!) I have chosen an apartment that I’m pretty happy with; it’s in a pretty area, 1/2 hour from work and very close to both downtown Durham and Chapel Hill. Sadly, I can’t move in until mid-September, but I am very very lucky that Betsy is willing to put me up for that long. Her husband, Charlie, teases me in true big brother fashion, and her little boys are the best part of my day. I get to pretend I’m a lobster, and chase them around the house, and wrestle on the kitchen floor. Also, Daniel knows more about dinosaurs than most paleontologists. Life is intense, but very, very good.

Woot!

I sold a story! The MacGuffin wants one of my flash fiction pieces.

I didn’t send anything out the whole time I was in the program (or for several years before that), so part of me was wondering, “Did the program do any good? Is my stuff worth publishing?” So it’s really good to get this confirmation that I’m on the right track.

New car!

After a solid week of searching, I finally have my first car. It’s a silver 2005 Honda Civic with 50k miles and a 6-year extended warranty, so I’m feeling pretty comfortable with it. So the first day I had it, I drove–guess where?–to Barnes and Noble for a latte and a book. Kind of trippy to have to remember where I parked, and scary and wonderful to be driving solo after all this training.

Next steps are to get an apartment and to get an NC license, which requires retaking the damn written test. Ngh. Plodding along…