First day of (Fun) employment

Today was my first official day of what I'm going to call (fun)employment.  The plan all along was to take this summer off in anticipation of the next three years being pretty busy year-round with school, and today was the first day where not having a job actually felt real.  My last day at work was actually May 31, but the next day, we left for out Mother-Daughter trip and I was pretty busy doing last minute errands, cleaning, packing, etc.  I knew it wouldn't actually set in until we got back from vacation. 

To be honest, it didn't feel much different than just having a day off.  I suppose I had been preparing for the day for quite sometime, but for some reason I thought it would feel odd, especially after I had a rather emotional last day - yes, I cried - but I also knew that would happen.  I really enjoyed working at Scoutware for the last 6 years, and will especially miss the people.  I was able to say goodbye to a lot of folks in the office and others via Skype.  I'm fairly confident I'll keep in touch with everyone through various means, but I know it won't make up for the day-to-day interaction I was used to.  Some of the folks had become my quasi brothers and sisters, and that meant a lot to me.

Anyways, enough with the sappy stuff...

On the whole, I'd say I had a productive day.  I woke up, took the dog for a walk, went to the doctor to get some shots/tests and blood work done (for school), did laundry, vacuumed, took out the recycling, accepted my school financial aid loan package, completed my entrance counseling for the loans, put together a shoe rack, picked up some medications for Inga, dropped off my bike for a tuneup, ordered some textbooks and supplies for school, and took Inga on another walk.  And with all that, I've pretty much done everything I needed to do for the whole week, so it should be interesting to see how I fill up the rest of my time!

Though I will not have any sort of 9-5 routine, I do plan on keeping busy, however.  I have approximately three weeks until Megan and I take off for our epic, two week cross country road trip.  This also means I have approximately three weeks to get in *some* kind of shape for our various adventures, one of which includes a 12 hour + hike in Zion National Park, known as The Narrows.  Plus, this week begins the typical 16/17 week training program for the Chicago Marathon.  Mike and I hit the gym tonight so I could work my legs back into running.  I think the last time I really ran at all was probably the Shamrock Shuffle back in April.  Yikes!  We'll see how sore I am tomorrow.

Beyond working out, I'll be doing a fair amount of reading, starting with reviewing medical terminology and anatomy and physiology, as well as knocking off all the unread books from my Kindle (which numbers 8 at the moment).  I'm open for any suggestions as to more good books I can pick up along the way.  In addition to these things, I'd really love to (re)learn basic Spanish and guitar.

Finally, at some point Mike and I will also be taking a vacation or two (location TBD).  All of these things should lead me right up to my PT school orientation on August 23rd and our first day of classes on August 27th.

In the near term, I found out that Girls in the Game is having a kickoff party for their marathon race team at Goose Island on Clybourn tomorrow night.  I only found out about it after emailing the race team director about joining the CARA marathon training program.  I guess they had the wrong email address for me, which is odd, considering I had received previous race team correspondence. Oh well, at least I didn't miss it!  I'm looking forward to meeting a few new people and finding out more about getting ready for the marathon.  I'm also hoping to connect with someone about logging a few volunteer hours per week.  See, I told you I would be keeping busy!

I'll also work on posting something about my first vacation of the summer to the Pacific Northwest.  All I will say for now is that I drank A LOT of beer and ate a LOT of good food.