Up and Down

The last 24 hours have been a bit of a roller coaster ride. I needed to register on the Workforce Commission website for their job search section in order to be eligible for unemployment benefits. I didn't really want to do this now, but I had to register within 3 days of applying for benefits. I didn't want to do it because I knew I would look at their job listings and I didn't think I was ready to do that quite yet. Well, I couldn't help myself. It brought me down a little bit because many of the jobs that are in my degree field have requirements that I don't meet (my last job was fairly specialized). And then in looking at some jobs that might be more along the lines of 'more fun' or 'things I might actually enjoy doing' or 'less pressure', I saw that a lot of these jobs don't pay enough for a single person to live on. Crap. Actually makes me wish I were married for maybe the first time. At least if your spouse is working too, you can possibly afford to have a poor-paying job. So, for pretty much the first time since I got canned I didn't sleep all that well (not counting neighbor dog's wakeup call yesterday).

Today I decided that I was going to tell my parents about this situation. Then this morning I get an email from my Mom saying that they are going to be out of town this weekend. I haven't gotten an answer when I try to call, so they may have already left. So, now I still get to worry about that all weekend. I guess that's what I get for not being in touch with my parents as much as I should. Serves me right. I need to be better about calling them on a regular basis. It may be better anyway to let them have a nice weekend without worrying about my crap.

I don't know what the deal is, but my hamstring kinds of hurts today. I don't know if it's because the weather was cooler when I ran yesterday or because I was running on pavement for the first time in a while, but I don't like it. I may try to run again tomorrow if it feels better.

As far as the up part of the roller coaster, I got a paycheck today. Even better, I got a check for 203 hours of vacation. I thought this was odd because I had a balance of 80 hours when I was booted, so this was what I was expecting. What I forgot about was the fact that I have been accruing vacation all year. So, when you add that to the 80 hours you get 203 hours. Sweet. The check amounted to about 2 months of my current living expenses, so that's definitely nothing to sneeze at. I am very grateful that financially I am in pretty good shape to weather this crisis.