What is Life?

What is life?

Life is finally finding the motivation to seriously start revising your 40-page senior honors thesis and getting halfway done, only to have your computer stolen when your house is broken into.

This has been my life over the past week.

Life is the closeness, love, and support that is born out of the ashes of such a tragedy. It is amazing how sympathetic people become when a catastrophe strikes. My parents have been very helpful, not expecting any reimbursment for the items of theirs that were stolen. At first, we had thought the thief(-ves) had stolen some tools I had borrowed from my parents to hang up our new TV and a picture my aunt painted for me. But it turns out they dumped the tools into a computer bag that we also thought was stolen and then hastily dropped it in our messy storage room where they escaped by breaking a window. So at least that is something we don't have to worry about anymore. But before we found the tools the other day, my parents had said they didn't expect any reimbursement for their stolen property, even though it was well over $200. It was just a really nice gesture. And my dad kindly paid to have our windows repaired.

Life is having your i-Pod stolen so you have a good excuse not to work out for a week or two until you get a new one. Of course, it might be longer than that because I will have to reassemble my music collection on my new computer. That is one thing I am very irritated about: losing my ENTIRE music library. It was all on my computer an i-Pod. Luckily, I can download what I purchased on i-tunes again. But the vast majority of my music was from CDs, so hopefully I still have them somewhere. Life is ripping a bunch of old music onto your new computer.

Life is getting new stuff that's even better than your old stuff because your old stuff was stolen. My new computer, even though it will be missing all my documents and music, will at least be even better than my old computer (which was really only 3 years old, but that's like 30 in computer years). Faster processer, more RAM, more graphics memory, that kind of stuff. Windows 7 instead of stupid Vista. Good riddance, Vista.

I have been saying for a while now that if anything ever happened to my i-Pod, I would get a better one. I have been wanting an i-Pod Touch for a while now, and it looks like I finally have the excuse I need to buy it. My old i-Pod was a nano and I loved it, except it only had 16GB of memory which I was quickly filling up, and I think I am going to get the 64GB touch, which will take me forever to fill up.

Life is your unemployed roommate being willing to stay home while you're at work because you're paranoid you're going to get broken into again. Mike is staying home this week until Thursday, when the alarm company is coming to install our new home security system. One time getting burglarized is all it took for us to learn...

Life is finding out it costs over $2000 to have your gigantic trees trimmed so that you can get satellite TV service. Craziness... We're getting another bid or two for sure.

Life is certainly interesting. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The New Job

I always told myself working with my husband would be a bad idea. And now here I am doing it. We work in the same division of Marriott, in the same office, but in different departments. Is that bad? So far we've only had one or two minor problems with it, but I think the benefits have outweighed the costs. We can carpool to work most days (when our schedules coincide), we can have lunch together some days, we can talk about work and know what the other person is talking about. It is awesome. And I am working a full-time job now and getting paid a full-time salary. It's way nice. Can't wait for my first paycheck next week.

I've lost some momentum on finishing off my thesis and my book, but I will find the time as I settle back into my new routine. I just need to finish off the thesis and do all the revisions I need to so I can just put that behind me once and for all and then I can concentrate on my book and the 8 million other writing projects I want to do. Like Nano and a poetry collection and this blog and starting up a blog related to my new job (I'm hoping to create a monthly contest where interested associates write about working in a call center and submit entries to the blog. Winners could get published on the blog). It just sounded like a fun idea. And I think I could find a manager to approve it.

I miss the kids, but I'm too busy to really miss the old job. I don't feel as noble in my profession as I once did, but I certainly feel more wealthy, because I am. Updating soon about the writing projects, hopefully.