Army Post Road

Yeah… that's right. Tomorrow is my birthday. And we're gonna tie it on and go nuts, even if it's just a few of us (bastards not wanting to come out on a Sunday night, working the next morning is a lame excuse).

I had a job interview with Bo'James on Thursday and it went quite well. Hopefully I'll hear from them on Monday and then we can go from there on getting out of QuikTrip.

My first post in my apartment!!! Well technically this is the loaner apartment, my apartment is downstairs, waiting to be finished. I get to move into it this week. But I'm not in a hotel and I'm not living in my parents' house!!!!! That's the key.

On to even more exciting things… MY BIRTHDAY IS IN SEVEN DAYS! That's right, I've been practicing for this one for years upon years and now we've finally made it to the big-leagues. For those of you who I haven't talked to and will be in Iowa City this weekend (or are going to make a trip to Iowa City this weekend just because you love me), we'll be partying it up at the Sports Column, probably after 8:30, 9-ish.

On another good note, I'm going to church this morning for the first time since atleast the first weekend in June, maybe even late May. Mom will be happy.

Anybody else like one paragraph for my 21st birthday debauchery plans and then the next for going to church?

Like I established in the earlier post: I'm moving into an apartment in Iowa City tomorrow. After nearly seven months and through sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much, I'll finally back in a place of my own in Iowa City. This is a huge relief. I think I've carried on and on many times before about the significance so I'll spare it.

Now I'd like to see what kind of difference it's going to make to everyone else that I'm back. I know some people are going to be excited and happy, I just wish everyone was. It will probably take me a long time to figure out everything that's gone wrong and why everything happened the way it did. I wish I could just sit down and lay everything out, because there is really large amount of things I've kept to myself that I don't want to. I just hate being kept at arms length from someone that still occupies so much of my mind. It makes me uncomfortable to admit that she occupies as much of my thoughts as she does but it isn't something I've concealed very well, if at all. I don't think it makes a difference what I say about all this though because I don't think she has a concern about it big enough, if at all, to get her outside her comfort zone to talk about it at all. I also think to her it's a settled issue and not a discussion that has any practical result possible.

And maybe this will all go away as I get fully back into a social life in Iowa City. We shall see.

I FINALLY MOVE INTO AN APARTMENT IN IOWA CITY TOMORROW! Oh happy day! 

Sad, it feels like a hollow victory at the moment. 

I guess it's movie time with the family, I'll expound more later.

Well, as of last Thursday I am officially transferred to Cedar Rapids and I am moving to Iowa City as soon as I can get in some place.  Now that I'm being paid by QuikTrip to be here permanently, hopefully I'll really turn up the heat on finding a new job.  Like I mentioned in earlier posts, I think I'll just time it so I start at something part-time soon before I leave for or right after I return from Ft Riley. 

In the month since I came back to Eastern Iowa things have improved so dramatically on so many levels and in so many areas that it's hard to overstate.  There is something, however, that still hurts more than anything else has. 

Trouble focusing, I'll add more later.

     Like I said, we've finally hit upon night number 9 of nights working in a row.  Store #555 isn't hard, it's only a lilttle busier than #504 out in Marion, the morning moves along fairly briskly which is nice.
     I had more but I have to start getting ready for work.

Oy, this week's schedule has me working NINE days in a row, last Tuesday night through this coming Wednesday.  It's just plain hard working nine days in a row let alone working the overnight schedule for nine nights in a row and the next three nights are at much busier stores, one so busy it has a modified schedule (I've only worked in a store that busy once and it was the Fairgrounds store during the morning and early afternoon; we'll see how it all goes.  The upside to all of this, however, is that I get to go out in Iowa City Thursday night.  It will be only the second time I've gone out on a Thursday since December and only the third Thursday night off I've had since early January.  I would like to stay on this schedule the rest of the time I'm at QuikTrip (which I hope to God it's only a few more weeks) but I don't know if that is going to happen.  That comment just tangentially lead me to when I should quit QT…  I'll need a new job by then.

Wow, that very quickly became a very good plan.  Assuming I can find a part-time job by then, I should leave QuikTrip when it's time to go to Ft Riley for AT (the last two weeks of August) and then come back and start school and my new job.  BRILLIANT!  The linchpin to this whole plan is finding a part-time job.  I can handle being at QT since I'm here in CR that long, now let's just find a decent enough part-time job that I can leave there when it's time to go back to school.

Also talking about Ft Riley, LTC Hildebrand came to drill last weekend and asked for volunteers from all of us who didn't have 730 days deployed somewhere and at that point I said no.  However, I'm beginning to strongly reconsider it.  You can read back a few months in my posts where I went on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the pros and cons of going to Riley for a year.  The whole process to reconsider after I said no last weekend came about because the place I thought I had locked into to live next fall seems to no longer be available because people were not communicating with their boyfriend/landlord and didn't know they had already lined up another roommate.

Ok, if I'm going to make anything of this holiday I'd better get to showering and moving on so this post is done.

Oh, and by the way, it doesn't look as though my stay in Cedar Rapids has become permanent…. yet. We'll see.

And it is complete!  I'm moving back to Iowa City sometime in the next week or so.  I've FINALLY been transferred to Cedar Rapids permanently (not only that, my schedule has me off on Thursdays and Saturdays, how magnificent is that?) and so as soon as QT tells me I'm out of my hotel room, I'm moving to IC.  All the pieces are going back together: my license, living in IC; the two very biggest pieces.  Getting back into the University before January '06 seems out of the question and following with that the possibility of getting back to Cambus is equally delayed.  Even so, I'll be back amongst friends and back to living where I'm most comfortable. 

A lot of what I had to do to get my life back in order is mostly done at this point.  I still have some important things to fix and try to make up for but those things won't come on any timetable but I have to work to make it right.

Hopefully now that I'm moving back I can find a new job in Iowa City much more quickly.  However, since we're getting so much closer to getting back into class (even if I can't go to the University, I will be going to Kirkwood) and really only having time to work part-time, I have a bit of a quandry for myself on whether to continue to try and find a full-time job in IC and do it until school dictates I can't any longer or whether I should put finding a job on hold for a few weeks and just stay at QuikTrip until it's time to transition from full-time to part-time and back to school.