High Stress Incoming

[zqadams]

     Went to Austin this week to do some apartment pre-hunting.  No idea what'll be available in April when it's time to sign a lease, of course, but as I won't have a day off until Easter, and that's only one day, it was "go shopping this week" or "let the locator place me sight unseen."  This is the part where I start to get nervous about the whole damn thing; I've been dependent on my family for long enough (since 04, and even then I had my rent paid even though all my other expenses were my own) that this is a big step, even though it's one most sane people take a good ten years before I am.  Still, I got a top five sites together; my #1 is walking distance from a big grocery store, 20 minutes by bus from work, gated and has several other disabled federal employees living there.  (It's $635 for 640 square feet, but every person to whom I spoke in the city reminded me that rent is volatile depending on occupancy for the complex and the area.)  I'm really excited to finally be joining the adult world or whatever, but it's still pretty scary viewed from four months out.

I'm now six books into Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan stories (through Ethan of Athos in the chronological collections) and enjoying them a great deal.  I also finished John Ringo's Citadel, which I thought was okay but not nearly as enjoyable as Live Free or Die.  It's probably going to be a while before I get to Mission of Honor; the last couple books have just been such a slog for me that while I'm enjoying the narrative, I'm not enjoying the BOOKS.  That's never a good thing.