Well, in the same way that it looks as if I'll be moving away from Xanga, I'm also getting ready for a physical move. The house we've been renting the basement of for the past 4 years has been sold. It's not a tragedy in and of itself, since we've never really liked this apartment, and only stayed because the market here is so tight. But faced with necessity, we managed to luck into what I think will be a good fit for us. It's a non-mobile mobile home a few miles outside of town. It has a fenced yard for dog and kid, a shed for my tools and equipment, and room for work areas for my wife and I. It does need some tlc, but the landlord said he's happy to pay for any materials if we want to work on the place, which suits us. We've always left the places we live better than when we arrived. And the best part is that it's only $50/month more than we're paying now -- money is extremely tight right now, and if we'd stayed in town we would have been looking at at least $100/month more than we're currently paying. Granted, we'll be spending a bit more on gas, but all in all it seems like this might be manageable.

And so we've started packing. Both of us passionately hate moving, but at least this time around it's only across town. Our last move was halfway across the country, and the two before that were halfway around the world! This should be a breeze in comparison, even factoring the kid into the equation

I'm also bracing myself for some further education. I'm taking two Masters-level French courses during July, in the hopes of qualifying for the French substitute teacher list. Since I got my education degree 3 years ago, sub days haven't come anywhere close to paying the bills, so I'm trying desperately to give myself an advantage. For those outside Canada, up here you need to be a fully qualified teacher to substitute. French teachers are in much higher demand than Theatre and English teachers. In fact, I think I can only give teaching one more year to start picking up before I have to head back to the drawing board yet again.

Anyhow, I'd better head off to bed. Lots of packing and plastering and planning to do tomorrow.

Take care
-J-

I haven't posted here in ages, but I still feel very attached to Xanga. I have, after all, been kicking around here for more than a dozen years. When I started writing here, my life was more interesting -- I was newly-married, then I was off teaching English in Korea... Once I was back in Canada and things settled down, I began to write less because I felt kind of guilty inflicting the mundane details of my daily existence on strangers. My last post here was a couple of weeks before the birth of my son, who turns 3 in a few weeks. It's been one helluva ride, and he's an wonderful little person.

I've met all sorts of fascinating people on Xanga. Another big factor behind my lesssened presence here is that the vast majority of the people with whom I really interacted have long since moved on to other pursuits. The "tone" of the place is very different now, and it's much harder to find people to really connect with. Plus I don't have nearly as much free time to devote to such interations. It really was the community aspect of Xanga that drew me in all those years ago.

And so now it may be going the way of the dodo. I hope not. This account might actually get grandfathered into the paid model somehow, I suppose, since I paid for Lifetime Premium many moons ago. If not, I expect that I'll probably integrate my blogging efforts into my personal site and keep things under one umbrella. It's funny that it never really occurred to me that Xanga might one day go away.