New life in SF

Saying that our life in SF is different than our life in Long Beach is an understatement. When we were living in LB, with my job, going to school, and being a co-leader for my niece’s Girl Scout troop my life was crazy. I knew that moving up here would be a great change for me, even just for a new level of sanity, and I’m happy to say that it’s true.

I can’t say that my first two months of work have been easy and stress-free. I was thrown into the thick of things and it hadn’t slowed down until just this week. I’m both the Admissions Counselor and the Registrar for the teacher education program for 300 students on three campuses. So end of summer is crazy time for Admissions and then right when all Admissions offices can begin breathing, it’s the beginning of the school year which means crazy time for Registrar’s offices. Luckily, tomorrow is the Add/Drop deadline for the university so that means that my inbox isn’t full of 100+ e-mails a day anymore, woo hoo!!! 🙂 I can say, though, that the past two months the latest I’ve ever stayed at the office was 5:45pm…no more Girl Scout parent information meetings until 9/10pm anymore!

Okay, so work is good and I finally have free time. Awesome. So as most of you know, Kevin decided to go back to school for aviation mechanics at City College of Alameda. His classes are Monday-Friday, 4:30pm-10:30pm (though on Fridays he gets out at 7:30pm). I have to admit, the first 2-3 weeks of this schedule were extremely rough on me. I’d wake up and leave home by 7:15am while Kevin slept in, then at night I’d go to bed around 10 and Kevin doesn’t get home until 11pm at the earliest. So for four days of the week when we interact, one of us is always half asleep. But just knowing how much Kevin LOVES the program and is learning so much and has finally found his niche in the world, it definitely has helped me in not feeling sad at nights when he’s not around.

I know that having Lola around has helped immensely. Each night after work we take a walk to the dog park and spend 45 mins. to an hour there, running around with the other dogs and playing fetch. The past four weeks on Tuesdays we’ve gone to dog training classes too and we’ve been learning a lot. Tomorrow’s our last class so hopefully Lola will shine amongst the other students! 🙂 I’ve also been involving myself in a few different groups that have kept me busy. I’ve been a part of meetup.com for a while now but when in LB I never had any time to attend meetings (or if I did, I just wanted to be at home!) So I’ve joined a few different meetups and have really enjoyed myself and have met some new friends. I’m in a Spanish-language meetup (where people of all levels get together to speak Spanish…I’ve been to two so far and it’s all come back to me so easily!). I’m also in a bookclub called “Booze ‘n Books” where people get together to discuss books over cocktails…what a fantastic idea, don’t you think? I’m currently reading “Shadows of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon for my first meeting next week. And lastly, I’ve joined the “Latin Potluck Party” meetup and have actually volunteered to be an Assistant Organizer and have planned our October meetup, so we’ll see how it goes! Once a week I also get together with my sister Jessie and some other friends for a LOST tv show fan group that Jessie created. We’re watching the shows each week starting from season one to get caught up before the last season premiere in December (If you’ve never seen the show, you’ve still got time to Netflix ’em all and get caught up too! Can you tell we’re huge fans?!) Lastly, I’ve been practicing the piano pretty often and can now play “Jingle Bells” and “Oh When the Saints go Marching in” (don’t be jealous!)

So though my nights are a little more lonely without Kevin around, life is still good and it just makes time with him over the weekend so much more special. 🙂