Journeyin' Onward

Well, today was my first official day of unemployment. I don't know if it was quite as glorious as I imagined it would be, but I suppose it wasn't so bad. My last day of work was pretty good. People were really good to me. I got a lot of hugs from people. One of my coworkers gave me a card. This new teacher woman made me a cake, but it wasn't that good. She doesn't eat gluten, so I'm guessing the crappy cake was gluten-free.

Jake and I tried to go hiking in Shenandoah on Saturday. We bought a season pass. Our plan was to try to do a 6.4 mile hike to see a waterfall and return to the car. We got about halfway to the waterfall when it really started thundering and I thought we'd probably get rained on, so we turned around and called it quits for the day. Neither of us was prepared to get rained on. The picture above is me out on the trail. After we left the park, we stopped at this store called the Emporium. It was great. We saw the prototypical rural Virginian family there. The husband was wearing a wife beater and they all had southern accents. The Emporium sold books on how to talk country, jars of honey, bottles of Stewarts soda, lots of random things with the confederate flag on it, pieces of wooden furniture, and Minnetonka moccasins (aren't those from Minnesota?).

On Saturday night, I went out to some bars in Adams Morgan with some of my (ex) coworkers. It was good fun. I drank this awful thing called a Portland coffee, which was just Bacardi 151 and coffee mixed together. We randomly crashed a private party, which I didn't figure out until later was a "lesbian" party. Anyway, I hope I'm able to keep in touch with some of my old coworkers. Jake is having poker night again on Friday and I've been trying to bother some of them to come...no one from work has ever come and I think Jake's had at least two or three of these things since I worked at APTS. I think Lydia might come...but she's the only one I've really heard much back from.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to go to the mall. I need to go and pick up the wedding bands that Jake and I ordered and I think I'm going to clothes shop, look for a good graduation gift for my brother, and try to find something for Jameson's birthday. Today I applied for about five jobs, cleaned the apartment, and went and worked out. What else should I do besides apply for jobs? Here are my ideas for now: knit some rags I can use for cleaning, download and listen to random podcasts, read about bioethics and economics, plan elaborate vegetarian dinners, bake cookies, sit in a coffee shop for an afternoon, look for ideas for my wedding hairstyle, and browse in bookstores.