I was trying to leave a comment at a friend’s MySpace page (some hilarious blogs, btw), but of course the site is coded by retarded space monkeys and breaks at the mere sight of a login request or blog listing. Oh, and hasn’t the IM function been ‘broken’ for about a year now? Thanks, Tom for the great site you’ve hooked us on and leave in shambles!

Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.

This error has been forwarded to MySpace’s technical group.

Anyway, as some of you know, I gave up on the job in Phoenix in light of a much better job offer here in Michigan. Not to mention that Accenture was offering about $15k less, had no tuition reimbursement, and was taking almost two months to complete the recruiting process, I even got a bonus for taking a job in Monroe! After all is said and done, I’ll hopefully be living in Ann Arbor (link to some photos of the town). The commute might be a bastard in the winter time, but I think it’ll be worth it for a chance to live in the city.

I’m excited about starting, though I’ll be pretty sleepy the first day or two (I am up at 4:51am, after all). My sleep cycle will have to be readjusted, along with my mindset (i.e. the previous post about loss of mental agility). Oh well, in due time I’ll be back to somewhat normal … hopefully in time for my first Master’s class to start. Graduate level database theory … shouldn’t be too bad; I liked my undergrad DB class so hopefully this will be interesting also.

And, can’t wait to get my car back. It’s been a month and a half now not being able to drive … I can’t even remember what it was like to be able to go somewhere on my own accord. May 10th is the lucky day … I’ll definitely be celebrating that weekend, hopefully at my new place in Ann Arbor, within walking distance of the bar.

After being laid off, having my license temporarily suspended for speeding, and having to move back home, the last three months have been pretty much a string of weekend drinking, sitting on my duff playing WoW and B&W2, arguing with the Michigan Unemployment Agency about why they should pay me. I never mentioned the driving situation on here because I didn’t want it to have a negative effect on finding a new job. But I will have to let my new employer know to make sure everyone understands what’s going on. At least I don’t have to explain a DUI/DWI. I was sort of expecting the job in Arizona to work out, and if that had happened I wouldn’t have had to worry about having a license until I was eligible to have it reinstated. Then Hal from Custom Business Solutions got in touch with me, and at the time he was just another recruiter (no offense, of course). For some reason it still hasn’t really hit home that the new job would work out as well as it did, so I never brought up the driving situation. Lucky for me I have a stable way of getting to work, but it will be a bit akward to explain the situation when the topic arises.

The worst part of the last months was the sense of overall helplessness because of my driving situation. It’s amazing how much pride I’ve had to swallow the past few months. I never realized how important my independence was, and how big of a factor driving was to that. Whenever I used to feel like I wasn’t in control or needed to think a problem through, I would just exercise my freedom and jump in the car, driving wherever and for however long I wanted. Not being able to do that is incredibly repressive on a man’s spirit. Well, hopefully soon I’ll have it all back in perspective: I’ve got a great job lined up with good people to work with, school is starting again, I’m getting my license back sooner rather than later, and I’ll be getting my own place again.

Just recently I’ve had something else fall in my lap, family related. But I can’t dwell on that … to do so would be a huge step backward in this whole process of getting some sense of happiness back. It is hard to see those around me suffer, though …

Tomorrow my chauffeur (my mom, who’s been driving me everywhere thankfully) and I are heading to Ann Arbor to check out the apartments out there. She’s still trying to covertly talk me out of it, offering up the idea that we drive from Ann Arbor to Monroe in hopes that I decide the commute will be too long … and she reads this journal, also, so I’ll hear about that part tomorrow I’m sure. For now, I should get a few hours of sleep.